Newsgroups: talk.politics.libertarian,alt.politics.libertarian Subject: Re: A Non-Libertarian FAQ, Version 1.4 Summary: Expires: References: <5jnj38$fme$1@news3.microserve.net> Sender: Followup-To: Distribution: world Organization: The World, Public Access Internet, Brookline, MA Keywords: Cc: Henry Blaskowski (jhblask@bigpapa.nothinbut.net) has written a 10 part series of notes criticizing my FAQ, albeit rather ineptly. I wouldn't rate his criticisms as better than the other 4 low quality criticisms I link at my web site at Fortunately, I can address most of his criticisms by simply addressing his summary. He wrote: All in all, the essay had little to add to the discussion. The purpose of a FAQ is not to add to the discussion, but to subtract from it, by summarizing basic issues. Henry seems to have a lot of trouble understanding FAQ-nature, let alone the objectives of my FAQ. The arguments boil down to a few types: 1) Libertarians are occasionally bad arguers, sometimes using flawed logic or using quotes. No attempt is made to show that these things are more common among libertarians than among others. This is just presented as an attack tactic, which, oddly enough, suffers from the very flaws it decries. Henry misses the fact that my FAQ primarily addresses ARGUMENTS not arguers. I'm not interested in how frequently libertarians or anyone else use bad arguments: I'm interested in reducing the frequency of use of the bad arguments. 2) There isn't a libertarian country, so it must be a bad idea. This is a blatant misrepresentation of what I've written. For shame. Why the fact that "power corrupts" is a reflection on the philosophy that wishes to limit such power is not explained. I don't discuss this issue in my FAQ, so small wonder it is not explained. IMHO, libertarianism suffers from the problem of limiting the power of others, lest they include you in their state. I think that's the most likely reason there are no libertarian countries. 3) Libertarians want to use force, too. This is one of the few interesting and valid points in the essay, Gadzooks! A grudging compliment! although the essay completely ignores the fact that Libertarians are the ones who prefer to point this out. Libertarians conveniently ignore this fact in many oft-repeated evangelistic arguments such as "Only government is force!" Libertarians wish to *make explicit* the government's use of force. If all laws were discussed in the context of "Would you be willing to haul your mother off to jail to acheive this social goal?", we would have made some real progress. It is the statists attempt to deny this use of force that allows many ridiculous laws/programs to exist at all. First, everybody has always known that the world is organized by force. Libertarians simply pretend that it is their great discovery. Second, the "haul your own mother off" argument is a ridiculously arbitrary criterion. For example, an egoist might refuse to haul his mother off to jail for any crime except a crime against himself. "Go ahead, mom, murder some folks I don't care about!" Or a mother herself might be quite willing to go to jail for a social goal, such as enacting prohibition. And why your mother, rather than your 5th cousin 4 times removed, or a total stranger? The answer is, of course, that it is an appeal to emotion, to encourage an irrational decision. Third, your criterion does not resolve the central social issue of what to do about cases where the populace is divided on whether or not to haul mom off to jail. You can't just wish that problem away. And fourth, many laws have so little bearing on going to jail that the probability of their ultimately causing anyone to go to jail is laughable. For example, National Endowment For The Arts funding costs us an average of less than one dollar a year. I don't think that's gonna result in anyone being hauled off for admirable social goals. 4) The arguments that blur the distinction between to radically different things, e.g., cooperation = coercion, or moving six blocks = moving 2000 miles to a new country, or getting 20 people to agree is the same as getting 260,000,000 to agree. Black is radically different than white, but they lie on a continuum. There are a number of basic fallacies of argument libertarians exploit to cast gray items as black or white, to find qualitative differences where only quantitative differences exist. Henry does this too. These arguments are last grasps to score points by playing semantic games. The best response to such arguments is pity, as in "I'm sorry you couldn't think of anything intelligent to say" Sorry, but you're the one playing the games. I don't pretend that there aren't differences in scale: I rebut claims of qualitative differences. For example, getting 20 people to unanimously agree is nearly impossible in even a 20 member condo association. Which is why they are usually run by majority or supermajority voting, because it eliminates the opportunity for veto for perverse reasons. The voting process scales up well, even to 260,000,000. Read some real classical liberals to understand this. 5) Some Libertarians are confused/not perfect/weird/whatever. This, of course, has nothing to do with the philosophy, and is just an example of attacking the messenger when no valid arguments can be found. I think you need to re-read the introduction to the FAQ. It is mostly about some bad arguments that frequently are paraded in newsgroups. It is not about libertarians and hardly about libertarian philosophy. Those parts might come later. I don't really think this is a game that statists should be happy to engage in, since, just by sheer probablility, based on quantity, they have more nutcases/losers/whiners/whatever than the libertarians. I don't play that game in the FAQ. Once again, you are using the Big Lie technique of accusing your opponent of your own sins. Go ahead: search the FAQ for where I do such a thing. In fact, if you really want to get down to it, libertarians tend to be _more_ educated and stable than the general population. Why, we could say the same thing about Marxists too. It doesn't give you any more credibility. But once again, I don't indulge in ad-hominems in the FAQ as you suggest. You are defending yourself from a straw man you have created. It is only through the kindness of their hearts that they tolerate, legally and morally, the loonies in the other parties and continue to support the civil rights of those others -- something the statists are not likely to do for others. What pompous tripe. Who the hell are you to speak for all those other individualists, many of whom I've heard often detail how they would NOT tolerate the state? And of course, the "statist" record of support for civil rights in the US is essentially the best the world has ever seen. Your support is insignificant. Sorry, Henry, try again when you can read well enough not to misrepresent what others have written. I'd also recommend you check out the logic and propaganda FAQs linked at my site. I won't bother answering your more specific arguments: they were comparably flawed. However, they did remind me of a few more points to place in the FAQ in the future. Please let me know if you have a version of these postings on the web that I can link from my site. If you need, I can create it myself. I'm only too happy to let people see such lame criticisms. Mike Huben mhuben@world.std.com http://world.std.com/~mhuben/ (Check out the improved Critiques Of Libertarianism web page. The URL is http://world.std.com/~mhuben/libindex.html) Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defence of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all. Adam Smith