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Libertarian Key Concepts

In 2019 David Boaz penned a concise list of

Key Concepts of Libertarianism

Excepts:

Individualism. Libertarians see the individual as the basic unit of social analysis. Only individuals make choices and are responsible for their actions. Libertarian thought emphasizes the dignity of each individual, which entails both rights and responsibility. The progressive extension of dignity to more people — to women, to people of different religions and different races — is one of the great libertarian triumphs of the Western world.

Individual Rights. Because individuals are moral agents, they have a right to be secure in their life, liberty, and property. These rights are not granted by government or by society; they are inherent in the nature of human beings. It is intuitively right that individuals enjoy the security of such rights; the burden of explanation should lie with those who would take rights away.

Spontaneous Order. A great degree of order in society is necessary for individuals to survive and flourish. It’s easy to assume that order must be imposed by a central authority, the way we impose order on a stamp collection or a football team. The great insight of libertarian social analysis is that order in society arises spontaneously, out of the actions of thousands or millions of individuals who coordinate their actions with those of others in order to achieve their purposes. Over human history, we have gradually opted for more freedom and yet managed to develop a complex society with intricate organization. The most important institutions in human society — language, law, money, and markets — all developed spontaneously, without central direction. Civil society — the complex network of associations and connections among people — is another example of spontaneous order; the associations within civil society are formed for a purpose, but civil society itself is not an organization and does not have a purpose of its own.

The Rule of Law. Libertarianism is not libertinism or hedonism. It is not a claim that “people can do anything they want to, and nobody else can say anything.” Rather, libertarianism proposes a society of liberty under law, in which individuals are free to pursue their own lives so long as they respect the equal rights of others. The rule of law means that individuals are governed by generally applicable and spontaneously developed legal rules, not by arbitrary commands; and that those rules should protect the freedom of individuals to pursue happiness in their own ways, not aim at any particular result or outcome.

Limited Government. To protect rights, individuals form governments. But government is a dangerous institution. Libertarians have a great antipathy to concentrated power, for as Lord Acton said, “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Thus they want to divide and limit power, and that means especially to limit government, generally through a written constitution enumerating and limiting the powers that the people delegate to government. Limited government is the basic political implication of libertarianism, and libertarians point to the historical fact that it was the dispersion of power in Europe — more than other parts of the world — that led to individual liberty and sustained economic growth.

Free Markets. To survive and to flourish, individuals need to engage in economic activity. The right to property entails the right to exchange property by mutual agreement. Free markets are the economic system of free individuals, and they are necessary to create wealth. Libertarians believe that people will be both freer and more prosperous if government intervention in people’s economic choices is minimized.

The Virtue of Production. Much of the impetus for libertarianism in the seventeenth century was a reaction against monarchs and aristocrats who lived off the productive labor of other people. Libertarians defended the right of people to keep the fruits of their labor. This effort developed into a respect for the dignity of work and production and especially for the growing middle class, who were looked down upon by aristocrats. Libertarians developed a pre‐​Marxist class analysis that divided society into two basic classes: those who produced wealth and those who took it by force from others. Thomas Paine, for instance, wrote, “There are two distinct classes of men in the nation, those who pay taxes, and those who receive and live upon the taxes.” Similarly, Jefferson wrote in 1824, “We have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious.” Modern libertarians defend the right of productive people to keep what they earn, against a new class of politicians and bureaucrats who would seize their earnings to transfer them to political clients and cronies.

Natural Harmony of Interests. Libertarians believe that there is a natural harmony of interests among peaceful, productive people in a just society. One person’s individual plans — which may involve getting a job, starting a business, buying a house, and so on — may conflict with the plans of others, so the market makes many of us change our plans. But we all prosper from the operation of the free market, and there are no necessary conflicts between farmers and merchants, manufacturers and importers. Only when government begins to hand out rewards on the basis of political pressure do we find ourselves involved in group conflict, pushed to organize and contend with other groups for a piece of political power.

Peace. Libertarians have always battled the age‐​old scourge of war. They understood that war brought death and destruction on a grand scale, disrupted family and economic life, and put more power in the hands of the ruling class — which might explain why the rulers did not always share the popular sentiment for peace. Free men and women, of course, have often had to defend their own societies against foreign threats; but throughout history, war has usually been the common enemy of peaceful, productive people on all sides of the conflict.

Adam Schiff – 21st Century Joe McCarthy

The Steele Dossier and the End of Shame In American Politics

Closing paragraph:

Many have long marveled at the incapacity for shame in politicians. That missing emotion was most famously captured by lawyer Joseph Welch in the Army-McCarthy hearings in 1954: “Have you no shame, sir, at long last? Have you no shame?” The answer is that we now live in a post-shame era where the only shame is yielding to the impulses of decency or decorum. The Russian collusion scandal served its purpose and Adam Schiff would be the first say that there is no shame in that.

Milton Friedman Said It

The Hoover Institution provides a pdf of a
1993 book by Milton Friedman

Excerpt: from the Executive Summary

The major social problems of the United States—deteriorating education, lawlessness and crime, homelessness, the collapse of family values, the crisis in medical care—have been produced by well intended actions of government. That is easy to document.

The difficult task is understanding why government is the problem. The power of special interests arising from the concentrated benefits of most government actions and their dispersed costs is only part of the answer.

A more fundamental part is the difference between the self-interest of individuals when they are engaged in the private sector and the self-interest of the same individuals when they are engaged in the government sector. The result is a government system that is no longer controlled by “we, the people.” Instead of Lincoln’s government “of the people, by the people, and for the people,” we now have a government “of the people, by the bureaucrats, for the bureaucrats,” including the elected representatives who have become bureaucrats.

Why Not Abandon All Foreign Bases?

As published at: lewrockwell.com
By Laurence M. Vance
October 21, 2021

Neoconservatives—like Michael Rubin at the American Enterprise Institute (“The One Foreign Base Biden Should Abandon”)—haven’t gotten over President Joe Biden’s withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan.

But Rubin is also upset that “the Biden administration is determined to hold on to the one base that America should have abandoned a decade ago.” This is Incirlik Air Base in Turkey.

Rubin maintains that during the Cold War, Incirlik was crucial. But even though “the base supported U-2 surveillance flights, U.S. operations during the 1958 Lebanon crisis, the 1991 liberation of Kuwait, and, most recently, the fight against the Taliban,” Incirlik—which “also hosts approximately 50 nuclear weapons”—is “now a strategic liability” instead of “a strategic asset.”

Turkey “is as much an enemy as an ally.” President Erdogan cannot be trusted. “Every American serviceman, contractor, and family at Incirlik are potential hostages.” “Incirlik now risks a repeat of the 1979 Iran hostage crisis.” An American “departure from Incirlik” would not “affect U.S. operations.” The United States should use the “Mihail Kogalniceanu air base in Romania” or the “Souda Bay Naval Base” in Greece. It would not be “irresponsible” to leave “an obsolete base.”

Rubin is right. The United States needs to “end the U.S. military presence in Turkey.”

But here is a better idea: Why not abandon all foreign bases?

According to the Department of Defense’s (DOD) Base Structure Report: “The DoD manages a worldwide real property portfolio that spans all 50 states, 8 U.S. territories with outlying areas, and 45 foreign countries. The majority of these foreign sites are located in Germany (194 sites), Japan (121 sites), and South Korea (83 sites).” Incredibly, the DOD is “one of the Federal government’s larger holders of real estate managing a global real property portfolio that consists of over 585,000 facilities (buildings, structures, and linear structures), located on 4,775 sites worldwide and covering approximately 26.9 million acres.” The DOD has acknowledged the existence of about 800 U.S. military bases in 80 countries, but we know from the work of Nick Turse, David Vine, and the late Chalmers Johnson that that number could be over 1,000. The United States has about 95 percent of the world’s foreign military bases. “Red” China has just one.

There are also about 175,000 active duty U.S. troops overseas in over 170 countries and territories. World War II ended in 1945, and yet the United States still maintains tens of thousands of troops in Germany and Japan.

Why not abandon all foreign military bases, bring all of the troops home (not just the ones in Afghanistan), and stop policing the world? And while we’re at it, turn over all of the DOD golf courses in Japan to the Japanese.

The U.S. global empire of bases and troops is unnecessary to the defense of the United States, a global force for evil, and a drain on U.S. taxpayers. It’s only purpose is to carry out an imperialistic, militaristic, reckless, belligerent, and meddling U.S. foreign policy that is not in the interest of the American people.

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How it should be

A Wall Street Journal opinion article by Dorian Abbott expresses my understanding of how individuals should be treated regarding speech and hiring.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/cancel-culture-college-mit-dorian-abbot-university-chicago-representation-equity-equality-11635516316

Excerpts:

I believe that every human being should be treated as an individual worthy of dignity and respect. In an academic context, that means evaluating people for positions based on their individual qualities, not on membership in favored or disfavored groups. It also means allowing them to present their ideas and perspectives freely, even when we disagree with them.

I believe we are obliged to reduce bias where it exists, where we can. That includes honest reflection on whether we are treating everyone equally. But you cannot infer bias based only on the ratios of different groups after a selection. A multitude of factors, including interest and culture, influence these ratios. I disagree with the idea that there is a right ratio of groups to aim for. Instead, the goal should be fair selection processes that give every candidate an equal opportunity.

It is true that someone will occasionally say something that hurts your feelings. But hurt feelings are no reason to ban certain topics. We are all responsible for our own feelings. We cannot control things that are external to us, such as the comments of others, but we can control how we respond to them.

Remembering Karl Hess

I did not know him personally, but I attended some of his speeches and was impressed by his editing and writing for the LP News. I was captivated by his melodious voice and friendly demeanor.

Here is a recent story about him.
https://www.libertarianism.org/articles/karl-hess-and-death-politics

The article doesn’t mention it, but it has been claimed in many places that he was the ghost writer for Barry Goldwater’s speech with the line “extremism in defense of liberty is no vice.”
https://www.niskanencenter.org/on-the-saying-that-extremism-in-defense-of-liberty-is-no-vice/

He ran as a Libertarian for Governor of West Virginia in 1992, shortly before his death. When asked by a reporter what his first act would be if elected, he quipped, “I will demand an immediate recount.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Hess

Here is a 1981 documentary about him.

Give Bob Levy a Break

In an August 2021 podcast Dave Smith took Bob Levy to task for his article:

https://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/civil-rights/568492-vaccine-mandates-a-liberty-minded-perspective

Possibly, Dave Smith misunderstands what Bob Levy truly advocates. How about considering that most of the article is a setup for the last two paragraphs:

“Finally, what peripheral concerns need to be addressed before implementing compulsory injections? What will be the enforcement process, and the punishment for non-compliance? Will there be reporting requirements? Data tracking? Will special interests — drug companies being one example — exploit their government-conferred market power? Will politicians use the next crisis to rationalize even more invasive decrees?” 

“Those are crucial questions, which should be examined before embarking on a program that encroaches on personal autonomy. And yet, we are in the midst of a health emergency, which means that suitably modified, narrowly-tailored, time-limited rules may be justified.”

Yes – Bob leaves open the possibility that narrowly-tailored, time-limited rules may be justified, but that does not mean that he advocates for those rules. Before he would be happy with mandates, he wants the crucial questions he raises answered. Since it is unlikely that his questions would ever get satisfactory answers, one could say that his article is attempting to put roadblocks in the way of those who want vaccine mandates.