Monthly Archives: April 2014

Free Thoughts Podcast: What Is Libertarianism? (with David Boaz)
David Boaz, the executive vice president of the Cato Institute, sits down with Aaron Powell and Trevor Burrus to talk generally about the libertarian philoso...

By: Libertarianism.org

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Free Thoughts Podcast: What Is Libertarianism? (with David Boaz) - Video

Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not to their own facts. This celebrated line of the late, great Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan has become a political football, hurled first by Senate Majority Leader at the Koch Brothers in a speech on the Senate floor and then hurled back at Reid by the Charles Koch in an op-ed in yesterdays Wall Street Journal. Alas, poor epistemology. No one studies it anymore.

The Koch op-ed was remarkable in every way but most obviously because it was so juvenile. How dare anyone question their motives? Did they think no one would respond when they are spending millions of dollars in attack ads against politicians? I confess I was surprised to find out Charles Koch was, apparently, so thin-skinned.

But, it was the repetition of the epithet collectivist that best exhibited the sophomoric thinking of this scourge on our body politic. Stalin was a collectivist. Mao was a collectivist. Obama? Cmon. To note only one example, despite the fact that the entire culture now refers to the Affordable Care Act as Obamacare, what happened the past few months is the seven million people signed up for private insurance. They did not sign up for Obamacare, they signed up with Aetna or Blue Cross or Kaiser. How is that evidence of collectivism?

I also think it is at least histrionic to say that freedom must be restored in our society. There are many things that ail American society to my mind, but a lack of freedom is not one of them. I cant think of something I have intended to do in recent months but for the fact that the government was impeding me. Oh, I stop at red traffic signals, but not because the government tells me to do so, but because I dont want to be in a traffic accident. If you want a glimpse of the libertarian vision the Koch Brothers champion, I suggest you go to a major intersection one day when the traffic signals are not working. That is freedom, to be sure, but is it what we want?

Libertarianism is one of the leading heresies of our day. The definition of heresy as truth run amok fits perfectly. Libertarianism is a heresy of liberalism, not the modern, Obama kind but the classic, Lockean and Madisonian kind. Any thoughtful Catholic has sufficient difficulties with liberalism, all of which tend to wish it were less individualistic, less focused on human autonomy, less redolent of rights apart from correlative responsibilities. Libertarianism wants to pull liberalism in the opposite direction, removing even the few checks on unfettered license that liberalism supplies.

But, when it comes to epistemology, there should be no such thing as a libertarian position. Facts are facts, right? Well, not exactly. Look at the coverage of the Affordable Care Act. My friend E.J. Dionne wrote a splendid column yesterday asking if there was any penalty for untruthfulness in politics anymore when politicians and faux journalists routinely claim on thing, their claims are subsequently disproven, and they just look for different facts the sustain the same claim.

The fight over the ACA is only part of the problem. If you watched only MSNBC the past few weeks, you would be convinced that the most important story in the country was the investigation of Governor Chris Christie regarding the closure of lanes onto the George Washington Bridge. If you watched nothing but Fox News, you would be sure that the most important national story was either the utter failure of the ACA or Benghazi or, maybe, the so-called IRS scandal. If you watched CNN the past few weeks, it has been all Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 all the time, whether or not any new set of facts warranted such attention and the Breaking News banner. It is pitiful. Our news agencies are either propaganda arms of the political parties or they are ambulance chasers. Thank God for March Madness and Law & Order re-runs.

Facticity has its limits. I have cited before the observation of Leon Wieseltier that there is not a chart in the world that can explain the significance of charts in the world. We humans will always need philosophy, not mere scientism, and philosophy permits disagreement, especially on this tricky issue of epistemology. But, most political discussions are not subverted because of a faulty epistemology. They are subverted because the desire to win trumps the desire to be correct. When that desire to win is aligned with mountains of cash, you get the Koch Brothers. They look at our unruly, chaotic, highly individualized culture and they perceive a need to restore freedom? They see collectivism? Either they are blind, or they know nothing of history and what a real collectivism looks like, or they have drunk too much of their own Kool-Aid and are now incapable of sight and truth. Heresies are like that.

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Facts, Propaganda and Libertarianism

Republican Senator Rand Paul has been making a big play for millennials lately, most notably by taking his civil liberties pitch to colleges around the country. Paul has got the right idea when he says his party must evolve, adapt or die (although I think the first two are virtually the same thing).Katie Glueckof Politico wrote that The Kentucky senator drew a largely friendly reception at the University of California-Berkeley as he skewered the intelligence community.

Sen. Paul spoke of dystopian nightmares and added that your rights, especially your right to privacy, are under assault. Paulalso saidhe perceives fear of an intelligence community thats drunk with power, unrepentant and uninclined to relinquish power.

Virtually all of the other politicians taking that stand come from the left side of the political spectrum. They include figures like independent socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders and Democratic senators Ron Wyden and Mark Udall. Rand Paul is not like these other defenders of civil liberties.

Rand Paul, like his father, prefers to package his fairly old-school brand of economic conservatism under the trendier name of libertarianism. Thats not just a labeling change. It also means Paul has paired his retrograde economic ideas with a very outspoken stance against militarism and the espionage state. Its a mixture that Paul hopes can make inroads with groups that are not traditionally Republican voters.

Pauls play for millennials was almost inevitable. As a recent Pew studyreported, that generations disaffection with the two-party system appears to be at record levels. Fifty percent of millennials polled said that they do not associate themselves with either party, which is the highest percentage recorded thus far. Its also a 10 point jump from their equivalent age groups level of political affiliation only seven years ago.

But Rand Paul gravely misunderstands the nature of that political disaffection. Yes, millennials feel alienated toward political and other institutions. They have a right to feel that way. AsJoshua Hollandsays, millennials didnt abandon these institutions. The institutions abandoned them.

But Rand Paul and libertarianism are not the answer. His economic strategy can be summed up in a quota used for one of his bills: remove the shackles of big government byreducing taxes, regulations, and burdensome union work requirements.

In other words, more of the same conservative philosophy that got us in this mess in the first place. Here are 10 reasons why millennials should be extremely wary of the senator from Kentucky.

1. His philosophy of deregulation created your jobs problem.

Rand Paul loved to preach the gospel of deregulation. He went so far as to proclaim that Obama was putting his boot heel on the neck ofget thisBritish Petroleum. Why? Because BP was being asked to bear part of the cost for the oil spill it created.

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10 reasons Americans should be wary of Rand Pauls libertarianism especially millennials