Monday, March 21, 2011

Reading Libertarian Blogs

I was told recently that I don't do justice to "true Libertarians" by conflating them with the Tea Partiers. So yesterday I decided to fill this void in my knowledge of Libertarianism and perused a number of Libertarian blogs and websites.

When I fell asleep last night, I had a dream where it turned out that my husband had been given to me by the government for temporary use. As a valuable commodity, he could only be kept by me for a certain period of time, after which I had to hand him over to another person. This, obviously, did not make me very happy. 

So I decided that I'd rather remain ignorant of true Libertarianism than expose myself to any more websites that give me nightmares about governmentally rationed and distributed husbands.

13 comments:

Anonymous said...

If you think Libertarianism is about rationing and government intervention, then you are clueless about what it really is about. Libertarianism is more about freedom from both government and society. About protecting the rights of the individual above all else, because the individual is the foundation for everything.

You shouldn't close your mind to alternate ideologies just because they seem scary.

Clarissa said...

Ok, for the especially gifted readers of my blog: on Libertarian websites I saw so many scary stories about how the bad government wants to invade every are of our lives, that I had this dream. Is it any clearer now?

Anonymous said...

Oh, I see what you meant. I misunderstood.

But yeah, there's quite a few nutty Libertarians out there but they don't really scare me because they definitely are not about infringing my rights. People who want government to infringe on my rights are the ones that give me nightmares.

Clarissa said...

Which rights exactly do these mysterious people want the government to infringe upon?

Rimi said...

Clarissa, a piece of grandmotherly advice from someone who has had to study libertarianism: please allow it to terrify it. It should.

And keep asking these excellent questions.

Anonymous said...

Come on Clarissa, you're a smart lady, you know there is a constant assault on our individual rights from people who believe it is the government's business to govern our daily lives. It's a long list, but my main grievances are with invasion of privacy (full body scanners), state sponsored discrimination (Arizona) warrant-less spying (FBI illegal wiretapping), control over the internet, gun rights (ATF's project gun runner), and many more.

Anonymous said...

By the way, I recommend you check out Bruce Schneier's blog. His blog deals with a lot of these issues and he is an expert in the field of cryptography, internet privacy, and computer security.

http://www.schneier.com/

Clarissa said...

"It's a long list, but my main grievances are with invasion of privacy (full body scanners), state sponsored discrimination (Arizona) warrant-less spying (FBI illegal wiretapping), control over the internet"

-I wish all Libertarians were as reasonable as you. Many, however, are of the "get the government out of my Medicare" variety.

I must be a very good blogger if even my Libertarians are better than most. :-)

Anonymous said...

Yeah remaining ignorant is pretty easy isnt it

Clarissa said...

Ignorant of what?

How come anonymous commenters don't realize that such cryptic comments cause nothing but confusion. What's the point of making a comment that has no connection with anything?

Rimi said...

The first Anonymous who makes excellent points about privacy:

To shake off government because we disapprove of their illegal and hysterical, fear-mongering conduct would be rather like throwing the baby out with the bath water, wouldn't it? In effect, what is being said here is: the government did what no government is supposed do! This means all governments are evil! Not exactly logical, hmm?

To take a more concrete, less abstrcat notion than 'the government': taking our shovels and digging up roads and highways because bank robbers use roads to escape and accidents happen on them, seems rather removed from constructive logic, surely?

I fear the libertarian ideology simply because of this strange and destructive alienation they insist on, between a people and their elected representatives. The government is not an externally imposed tool of evil. WE elected them, and keep removing or re-electing them at regular intervals. If the US government -- let's stick to the US because libertarianism is most prominent there -- no longer reflects realistic American concerns, it's because average, non-big-corporate-boss Americans have, for decades, stopped taking a political interest in those issues that hit them the hardest: privacy, affordability, accountability, consumer rights, industry regulations for personal and financial security, and so on.

Of course, it's much harder work to take an active, educated interest in one's own welfare, and organise local/state/national-level movements to beat government back into shape. It's especially hard if one has fallen victim to the addictive and reassuring charms of media-driven partisan politics, based on issues that are completely irrelevant to the problems wrecking the US today (villianising homosexuality and abortion, for example). Easier just to play on people's very real fears and growl at the government one elected.

Of course, hysterical and moronically inaccurate blame-mongering and a cowardly shying away from actively bringing positive, constructive change are not the only reasons I hold Libertarianism in utter contempt. These hypocrite ideologues support precisely those fiscal decisions of the past US governments that have brought citizens to their knees, jobless, homeless, and without a future. Such innate viciousness and lack of the most rudimentary logic should make Libertariaism utterly repulsive to anyone who is even remotely concerned about their own welfare, and possesses even a small amount of logical ability.

Izgad said...

I regularly have nightmares about the government coming in and taking my kids away because some committee deems me as an unfit parent as I do not fit into some definition of tolerance. These have become more persistent since the government went into the polygamist compound a few years ago.

Clarissa said...

I thought that was a really great moment. :-)