The beauty of libertarianism as a political ideology is that just like a time share property pitch, a lot of the initial talking points sound really great. Free markets, legalized drugs, an end to foreign wars, etc. It’s romantic in its belief in the invisible hand of the market, self-determination and appeals to the better instincts of humanity that if just left alone, we’ll all act in a manner which benefits everyone.
However, when libertarians are put in a position to defend the practicality of their ideology in the context of the real world, most reasonable people rapidly come to conclusion that libertarians are either batshit crazy or willfully stupid.
For example, meet Rand Paul, Republican nominee for the United States Senate from the great state of Kentucky.
Rand Paul, as many of you know, is the son of Tea Party icon and idol to the libertarian fringe, Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX). The younger Paul posted an overwhelming victory over the RNC endorsed candidate in the Republican primary earlier this week. Shortly after his victory and emergence onto the national scene, Paul appeared on the Rachel Maddow Show to discuss comments he made to the Louisville Courier-Journal prior to the primary election.
Essentially, Paul states that he would not have voted for the 1964 Civil Rights Act as Title II of the act mandates that private businesses that provide/maintain public accommodations be forced to adhere to equal protection provisions. Paul maintains this provision of the act violates private property rights. He also states that he would not have supported the Americans with Disabilities Act as Title III of the act mandates that all private businesses with public accommodations make their places of business accessible to people with disabilities. He alleges that this also violates property rights.
In the interview, Paul states that he supports all other provisions of the act and I believe him. He states that mandates on institutionalized racism and discrimination can and should be legislated out of existence, but the implication is that private businesses should be allowed to post a “Whites Only” or “No Cripples Welcome Here” sign in their front window. Property rights are the holy grail of the libertarian movement, they shan’t be violated or restricted in any way. The mistake in this debate is casting Paul a racist, full stop. While property rights were used frequently by segregationists in the south during the fight for civil rights, I’m not sure it’s that simple an issue here. Paul and the worldview he supports is not about race, it’s about property rights and a philosophical, non-reality based ideology. In other words, he’s just a libertarian.
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After the ensuing blowup of negative publicity for his campaign began today, Rand Paul eventually backed off his statements and said he would have voted for the Civil Rights Act and supports the Federal Government right to regulate private business. As noted by Talking Points Memo, here’s the timeline of the whole scandal:
So, by our reckoning, here’s Paul’s progression on the issue over the past 24 hours:
- Paul on Maddow, circa 9 p.m. Wednesday: I don’t agree with the Civil Rights Act, but I don’t believe in racism.
- Paul statement, noon Thursday: I wouldn’t support repealing the law.
- Paul campaign statement, 2 p.m. Thursday: I support the law and the government’s power to enforce it.
- Paul on CNN, 5 p.m. Thursday: “I would have voted yes” for the law. “There was a need for federal intervention.”
As an aside, Rachel Maddow is one hell of a journalist. She did what no other broadcast journalist does…stayed with one topic, tried to force an issue and get an answer to a question that matters…respectfully and intelligently. She allows her guests to talk, but she never lets them off the hook. It’s compelling television.
I digress…
The interview and the emerging candidacy of Rand Paul brings several issues into the light of day. Should we not have a full vetting of the Libertarian agenda as a means to identify whether or not it has any chance of ever being adopted as anything other than a sideshow in our political circus? As a means to separate the nutty fringe wheat from the christian conservative chaff in the oft-discussed and analyzed tea party movement? Should we not fully educate people on where these people stand on issues of import?
So, here is a short list of questions for the local chapter of the Libertarian Dogmatics over at Political Class Dismissed and Tea New York. Yes or No answers are preferred, but I know I won’t get them, if they bother to answer at all.
Questions cribbed from Ezra Klein of The Washington Post with some additional flourishes by me:
Can the federal government set the private sector’s minimum wage?
Can it tell private businesses not to hire illegal immigrants?
Can it tell oil companies what safety systems to build into an offshore drilling platform?
Can it tell toy companies to test for lead?
Can it tell liquor stores not to sell to minors?
Do you support the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, full stop?
Do you think banks should be allowed to choose to not lend to blacks, hispanics, jews, or gays based on identity?
Can local governments set building codes for construction companies?
Can local governments set zoning regulations to regulate the location of commercial properties or private residences?
If anyone else has questions, feel free to add them in the comments section.
The Buffalo Record 
Do you believe and internet service, such as Twitter or Facebook or WNY Media, should have the right to delete your account because your picture or your name suggest you may be a certain race or ethnicity? Or simply because you express opinion they may not agree with?
Your series of questions are an illogical tossed salad of warm fuzzies and real issues: Loans to blacks or gays are not the same thing as the civil rights act. Zoning laws are not the same as issues of immigration.
Property rights are real, quantifiable, checkable. In the world of laws property rights (real estate, property, etc) are tangibles. Human rights that are, historically, based on intangibles – shared religious patterns, societal traditions, etc – rather than on laws. Human rights and their intangible supports are harder to quantify, to judge, to change. The older models, east and west, assumed a homogeneity of culture and, in violation of that sameness, the assumption continues, appeal would be made to instruments of culture rather than law. Land was what we fought over for most of the last millennium; over the instruments that create, support and transfer real estate. Intangibles stood on their own.
We are in a cultural, perhaps global, process of attempting to create a tangible way to protect intangibles. In an increasingly global, mobile society, we are looking for some model of global law so that one can get the same “rights” in other places that one gets at home. Before the middle of the last century, though, there are no preceding models of laws protecting intangibles at all outside of the USA. And the Bill of Rights is still young enough to be an experiment.
Libertarianism is a logical attempt to draw the powers of gov’t within reasonable limits – but it makes the same cultural assumptions that we made in the 1940s (or the 1740s): an homogeneous society that will, of its own, govern in the intangibles. We do not have that any more – rather we have multiculturalism, multilingualism and other “multis”. It is our nihilist assumption that all of these muiltis are “equally right” and our failure to judge between these that have brought us to this point.
Earlier models are fading away – not models of gov’t, but rather of society. And gov’t is not society, but rather a product of it. I doubt not only that gov’t should protect intangibles – but I doubt that it can, at all. If society says “X is a right” and then elects politicians to defend that right… when the majority of society changes its mind… X is no longer a right. That’s all there is to it. There is no basis in gov’t to declare that X is a right, good for all eternity. Gov’t is not deity – nor should it pretend to be. What is a cilvil right today may be – in a democracy – made a civil wrong tomorrow, or vice versa. In a secular democracy, pretending that intangibles are good for ever and ever is childish.
Which is to say that your questions, a mishmash of tangibles and intangibles, needs to be answered not with a yes and no, but rather, “yes, sometimes” or “no for now” or “maybe, depending on the majority will”. We’ve no way to answer any of those questions in our USA gov’t without either an appeal outside of gov’t (Culture/religion will keep this so) or an appeal to totalitarianism (Gov’t will force this to be so). Even the Tea Party shows this problem: failing to find a useful boundary between tangible and intangible, stumbling daily towards a right wing dictatorship based on the the mirror reversal of the same fears the left is currently using.
I’d rather the USA fade away into chaos and anarchy, or at least impotent Libertarianism) than totalitarianism – and in the absence of shared morality and culture, we have no ability to be democratic any more, in the classic sense.
Fr Huw presents an argument that for me shows a big problem with Libertarianism…it bases its arguments on issues as black or white with no real gray area. The problem is the world exists in a gigantic gray area. People have come to the point where their only solutions to disagreements/issues is an “either/or” mentality (either your idea is right or wrong) when in reality it would be better to incorporate the language of “and”…”my idea and your idea together is probably the best solution to the problem.” It seems that many people in this country have forgotten how to build consesus, and I believe this is due to a propagation of this “me first/i’m right and your wrong” mentality. This brings us full circle to the Libertarians/Tea Partiers who think that they can live and survive as an island with no help from anyone else. I think that history has shown us over and over that this isn’t possible and that community is the only true way to survivie, both as indivduals and as a society. As the world becomes smaller and smaller, it will be our abilities as rational/reasoning beings to work together, build consensus, and progress the idea of community that this country was founded on. The Libertarians/Tea Partiers state that they want government out of our lives, but fail to realize that the founders they so often quote understood they were only human, that the Constitution was only a framework, and it would need to be added to and changed with the times, hence the Bill of Rights! How can we assume that men who had no inkling of the kinds of technology we have now, could write laws to govern said technology. Also, how can we assume that these same men, who considered people as property and used language to show they were less than human (3/5ths clause), could make laws to govern today’s vibrant multicultural society. This is why we need consensus, now more that ever, on how to move forward. Our political debate has stagnated for now because of this kind of divisiveness. People need to remember their history lessons and understand that the only reason this country has progressed to the point we are at is through consesus building, not obstructionism and Libertarianism. Let’s use the word and more in our debates. Let’s defer judgement, and get to a point where the best parts of the different sides are blended together to come up with truely creative and positive investments in our shared futures.
The LP platform strikes me as an illogical tossed salad of willful non-answers and deflections, and Fr Huw’s response above echoes this.
Is the Libertarian platform merely a longhand way of saying “Hard answers are hard! Leave me alone!”?
I have some questions for which I’d like direct answers, not “we’ll its complicated and there are no simple solutions” platitudes. Apologies if I repost observations or opinions from previous comments.
Regarding 2.4 Government Finance and Spending:
“…call for the repeal of the income tax, the abolishment of the Internal Revenue Service and all federal programs and services not required under the U.S. Constitution…” “…provided that the budget is balanced exclusively by cutting expenditures, and not by raising taxes.”
Please explain how to reconcile this with Article 1, sections 7 & 8? Also, if the government repeals income taxes and employers (and thus all businesses) are divested of their rolls as tax collectors, they how will the government collect revenue? If businesses are not taxing and paying payroll/income taxes would they then also not be liable to collect sales taxes? Is the end game to defund government completely?
Regarding 2.6 Monopolies and Corporations
“…divest government of all functions that can be provided by non-governmental organizations or private individuals. We oppose government subsidies to business, labor, or any other special interest. Industries should be governed by free markets.”
Does this mean you support my freedom to stand on my front porch and negotiate the best rates among the local for-profit fire departments, while the flames lick up around me? Will the free market also provide many affordable options when choosing among the for-profit police departments? Also, with no government influence, I assume that the most successful corporation will not be barred from consuming all if its competition. When only one company is left, will my free market option be buying all of my goods and services from the good people of Microsoft-Pepsi-Monsanto Co.? Or is the little guy always “free” to start his own company to compete, clearly on an immedately-to-be-bought-out “level” playing field?
And as for “the Bill of is still young enough to be an experiment”, does this sentiment also pertain to the Magna Carte?
In Libertarian Fantasy Land I’ll be able to keep the entirety of my wealth, correct? Everything I earn will be mine to keep and spend or not spend how I choose? No taxes? No regulations? That sounds too good to be true.
I look forward to not having to trifle with the welfare of my fellow humans because it’ll be someone else’s responsibility. I’m standing up straighter already with that moral weight relieved. And standing up straighter, I’ll be empowered to better step over others and take what I want; free market ahoy!
Who will maintain the roads? Who will repair the sewer lines, or remove the garbage? What moral responsibility does the free market have to ensure we all have access to clean drinking water?
I get the attraction to the Libertarian tenet of “I have the personal freedom to do whatever I will, whenever I will, with no interference from the outside” and the idea that we all have this same freedom, but only as far as the ends of our noses. You do whatever you want and I do whatever I want, as long as the two do not cross. Unfortunately, Wild West never really existed, and even then, as now, attempting to maintain a society of 350 million stoic gunslingers is a romantic but impractical notion.
The free market has no morality. It has no concern for Maslow’s Hierarchy; only concern for profit. People are not good. People are greedy, scrabbling, lustful creatures. Acquisitiveness and charity are not complimentary traits.
History shows us what happens when people are free to run rampant over their fellow man, when robber barons have unfettered power, when the masses are held to indentured servitude. And we the people are not all on a level playing field. I see the word “libertarian” and I read “abrogation of responsibility”.
Greed, Sloth, Lust, Wrath, Gluttony, Envy and Pride; civilizations need governments to protect the people from each other and themselves. “Caveat emptor, pal.” is not the answer.
“I’d rather the USA fade away into chaos and anarchy” is the most succinct, honest and telling part of all of Fr Huw’s and, by extension, all Libertarians’ position.
And I’ll say it again; sweet jeesum crow. Libertarians are the myopic citizens of Springfield, lusting after Homer Simpson as sanitation commissioner.
Can the federal government set the private sector’s minimum wage? Minimum wage laws are counter-productive and hurt poor people trying to acquire skills.
Can it tell private businesses not to hire illegal immigrants? Employers should not be enforcement arms of the government.
Can it tell oil companies what safety systems to build into an offshore drilling platform? No, but the oil companies should be held liable for any environmental damage via the courts. It would be in their own best interest to practice good safety standards.
Can it tell toy companies to test for lead? No, but again, redress is available through the courts for producing harmful toys.
Can it tell liquor stores not to sell to minors? This is a States’ Rights issue.
Do you support the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, full stop? No, the fear of government prosecution swings the pendulum in a more harmful direction. People are more than capable of choosing to not do business with companies that exhibit deplorable practices.
Do you think banks should be allowed to choose to not lend to blacks, hispanics, jews, or gays based on identity? Banks are in the business to make money, it would not be logical for all banks to categorically deny services based on race, sexuality, etc. Even if a few did, they would experience a backlash and other banks would fill the void.
Can local governments set building codes for construction companies? The extent of the building codes would have to be defined in order to provide an answer.
Can local governments set zoning regulations to regulate the location of commercial properties or private residences? No
Asking for yes or no answers is nothing more than an attempt to limit debate rather than having an intelligent discourse.
I disagree. These are very practical questions that have real world applications. Zoning laws, for example, are a direct infringement on individual property rights. When you go home tonight thank your lucky stars that those zoning laws are preventing your neighbor from parking junk cars out on his front lawn, or opening up a hotel on his property…or worse, a rock crushing plant.
When you drive home on the freeway remember that many property owners were forced to sell their property under eminent domain so that freeway could be straight instead of a twisted monstrosity.
It is the limiting of property rights that gives rise to the protection of private property.
Who wants to buy a house with a rock crushing plant next door?
So when our private property rights are limited on the one hand, we benefit from that limitation on the other.
In third world countries, where zoning laws are almost non existent, it is not unusual to find a cardboard shacks right next to a nice fancy house or a noisy nail factory that butts up against a residential house.
Be thankful that we have zoning laws in the US that limit the right of property owners to do whatever they want to their property
“Can it tell toy companies to test for lead? No, but again, redress is available through the courts for producing harmful toys.”
Here I think you are taking your libertarianism to absurd heights.
If you had the choice between forcing companies to adhere to strict safety and health standards with frequent inspections and lots of government testing….and getting a settlement in court for your dead baby…which would you choose?
“People are more than capable of choosing to not do business with companies that exhibit deplorable practices.”
And if, 90 years after the first Civil Rights Act was voted down, there were still Jim Crow laws, sunset towns, de jure segregation, etc. etc., too bad. Why? BECAUSE FREEDOM THAT’S WHY.
I hope the Rand Paul candidacy brings all the libertarian ideas out in the open, so everyone can see how ignorant they are.
Libertarians do not support Jim Crow laws or sunset laws. Opposing the Civil Rights Act does not amount to support for those practices. So, what’s your point?
And who needs worker safety laws? If 145 people burn to death in a locked work area, for example, libertarians would fully support the right of their orphaned children to sue for damages, right?
Were those 145 people forced into a locked work area at gun point?
Exactly! It’s their own damn fault. Someone should ask Rand Paul that same question, to see if he feels the same way.
“Can local governments set zoning regulations to regulate the location of commercial properties or private residences? No.”
So, it’s perfectly okay with you that, after Libertarian Fantasy Land kicks in, I plan on buying up the property right next to your house and opening a full service casino/brothel/crack house, staffed by armed Blackwater mercenaries? I mean, with no government regulation of commerce I can open whatever business I choose where I wish and selling whatever freshly deregulated goods I wish.
You’re cool with my cigar smoking, donkey-eared patrons shooting heroin and smoking crack on the front lawn of my property in full view of your kids, right? After all, they’re staying on my property.
You’re free to move any time, right?
It’s unlikely the free market will put greed and corruption out of business. In fact, once I’ve raised enough money, I’ll buy up the property on all the sides of your house until there’s nothing left.
Maybe a free market dirigible will come take you off your donut hole of land, but there’s no way you’re crossing MY property, not without paying the going rate. What then?
What’s the Libertarian end game look like? Is it Snake Pliskin’s New York? Perhaps it’s separate societies of Morlocks and Eloi.
You Morlocks can dream of joining the Eloi as you purchase my ENTIRELY NOT RIGGED private lottery tickets. Well, not the black Morlocks. But they’re free to start their own lottery.
Mike In WNY and Fr Huw, did I get this right or am I missing something?
If you can elect politicians that say you can… you can. I will try to get a majority to elect politicians that that say you can’t.
Or vice versa
My point is that majority-elected gov’ts are not a source for rights that are not accepted by the society as a whole – and short of that acceptance, we have no way to legislate these things. I’d rather have a gov’t that relinquished the power to make laws against humanity’s conscience than have a gov’t that can flip flop from one extreme to another making a given position illegal today but mandatory tomorrow.
I’m not a Libertarian, however: that would assume I’m in favour of continued secular democracy which I equate with mediocrity. I am, however, in favour of more (not less) freedom when it seems to be always the choice of the gov’t to take that freedom away. I’d rather a world with a bit of danger than a lot of gov’t.
Yes, you are missing deed restrictions which have proven to be an effective method for the property owners to control development. Perhaps you should check out the Cato Institutes explanation of what is wrong with zoning laws.
The only thing in your link that mentions deed restrictions is this:
“Or to simply eliminate zoning codes (which, contrary to Yglesias’ claims, every libertarian I know advocates) and let people do what they want (including, if they want, living in high-density developments or low-density developments with deed restrictions providing the stability that zoning once offered)?”
Deed restrictions? If the local government has, according to you, no say in zoning then who’s to enforce these deed restrictions on MY property?
Your deed restrictions directly contradict #2.1 of your own platform.
Honestly, it’s all caterwauling and obfuscation, characterized by jealousy of BOTH those who have it better than you and those who are worse off (yet you perceive as having an “easier” go of it thanks to the social safety net).
Please elucidate: what exactly is the Libertarian end game?
And while you’re here, can you answer my questions from up thread?
Sell me on the Libertarian path. Frame your thinking in a manner where I’ll no longer expect society to devolve into 1970’s Chile if you were to get your way.
Aside to Fr Huw: I assumed that you had a dog in this fight since your initial comments read as though you were backing the Libertarian view point. I apologize. Opposition to “secular democracy” in favor of… what exactly?
A couple of things I’m having trouble with in the comments above:
“Property rights are real, quantifiable, checkable. In the world of laws property rights (real estate, property, etc) are tangibles. Human rights that are, historically, based on intangibles – shared religious patterns, societal traditions, etc – rather than on laws.”
I am assuming you say that property rights are tangible because property is tangible. But if you really are going to break it down that far, why stop there? The concept of property is intangible, isn’t it? Land, houses, buildings are tangible; property and ownership are concepts that people thought up (Mine! – as the seagulls from Finding Nemo would say). Rights in and of themselves are intangible. You can’t grab or touch a right, even if it is to a tangible thing. And although this thought deludes the conversation to a pointless spiral, I think that is the pattern I see about this type of ideology/thought process – if you’re going to say that the government should be limited simply because it shouldn’t be governing intangible things then you eventually reach anarchy because there is basically nothing the government can govern without intangible concepts being involved.
And my thought about Mike in WNY’s responses, while I appreciate he was trying to keep brief, these responses don’t make sense to me:
“Can it tell oil companies what safety systems to build into an offshore drilling platform? No, but the oil companies should be held liable for any environmental damage via the courts. It would be in their own best interest to practice good safety standards.
Can it tell toy companies to test for lead? No, but again, redress is available through the courts for producing harmful toys.”
Under what laws would people have redress? Once you start creating laws that say people can regain losses for physical, environmental or health damages, don’t you come full circle to governmental regulation again?
And why would it be in the oil companies interests to prevent spills? Granted they lose some of their product, but that assumes that people care about the long term livelihoods of their environment or even their companies. I see absolutely no reason to assume that. If oil companies, for example, were long term thinkers, they wouldn’t be oil companies at all because their supply is limited. They know the damage they do to the environment when they drill or run risky deep water operations not to mention the end results of the use of their products, yet they still do it. It’s nice to think people or companies will simply regulate themselves because there is compelling social pressure to do so, but it hasn’t been the case so far so why would it be the case if there was no government regulation at all? And I take the oil company example because it was used previously – I don’t mean for this to be a trial on oil companies. We could chose other examples as well.
Physical, environmental and health damage caused by negligence all violate property rights. It is the duty of the courts to enforce that right. The oil companies are not inherently evil, they work hard to satisfy the wants and needs of consumers. It makes much more sense to leave the safety issue to the people who have a vested interest rather than to a bunch of bloviating politicians, who for the most part are experts in nothing, creating regulations in their quest for votes. To often the regulations are beneficial to a few and harmful to many, distorting the market and creating less choices at a greater cost to the people.
I think it’s dangerous to assume that business like oil companies ” are working hard to satisfy the wants and needs of consumers”. As this accident seems to indicate, BP seemed more interested in saving money and short cutting safety on a project that was way over budget and costing millions of dollars with each passing day. The short cutting resulted in the blowout.
The main goal of a company is to MAKE MONEY.
A company that is truly serving the needs of consumers but is operating at a loss will soon find it’s doors shuttered .
Business #1 motivation is Money
>Can the federal government set the private sector’s minimum wage?
Yes.
>Can it tell private businesses not to hire illegal immigrants?
Yes.
>Can it tell oil companies what safety systems to build into an offshore drilling platform?
Yes. And they ought to. My Norweigan contacts, to paraphrase, tell me “keep drilling, just be careful.” 🙂
>Can it tell toy companies to test for lead?
Yes. And they ought to.
>Can it tell liquor stores not to sell to minors?
Yes. Perhaps unfortunately.
>Do you support the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, full stop?
No question.
>Do you think banks should be allowed to choose to not lend to blacks, hispanics, jews, or gays based on identity?
No. Bottom line is what counts, I don’t know why they would to begin with.
>Can local governments set building codes for construction companies?
Yes.
>Can local governments set zoning regulations to regulate the location of commercial properties or private residences?
Yes. Sometimes they’re stupid or regressive. But generally yes. I don’t see a problem, for instance, with conducting seminars for small numbers of people at your private residence if it’s
I’m a registered libertarian. Apparently I’m not very good at it.
I agree with these things, although I’m generally of the opinion that zoning requires a light touch. In other words, make exceptions if it’s advantageous to the local economy as long as you’re preserving what ought to be residential/historical/residential areas.
I think the issue with the more rational but still very economic-right libertarians is whether the government *ought* to.
edit: I agree with all of these things except where noted. The government obviously has the power to do all of them; they do, afterall.
further edit: “if it’s convenient and not disruptive to the community.”, that got cut off somehow. Forgive me, I haven’t had my coffee today.
Didn’t take long for the MSM to start targeting Mr. Paul, huh?
Rand Paul is NOT a libertarian. For example, He doesn’t believe that women should have the right to do whatever they want with their bodies, Nor does he believe people should have the right to take drugs or visit prostitutes if they want to.
Rand is basically a political opportunist who uses high sounding principles as a cover for the bigotry of his constituents.
ROFL.
The libertarian ideology must really bug Chris and Alan, because they can’t get over themselves fast enough to try sorry little rips, trying to paint the entire thing as bullshit.
Because, of course, they don’t have an ideology of their own except “We’re smarter than you, nanny nanny boo boo”.
I just have one question for Alan and Chris that I already know the answer to: Do you think there is ANYTHING that should be off-limits to the Federal government?
The typical answer is deflection and more “You’re stupid” commentary. Nothing funnier than guys who hate libertarians but can’t figure out why. Maybe it’s because your side has royally f***ed things up for the last couple generations and you don’t have any real answers? Or maybe because you stick your fingers in the wind to figure out which way the wind is blowing?
Sure. I’ve already answered this in exactly that way, incidentally.
Btw, “rights” granted by governments are not “rights” at all.