[Vision2020] Are you REALLY a libertarian?

[Nicholas Gier]

Hi Paul,

I agree that the term "libertarian" should be kept clean, but, since I
started studying and teaching this political philosophy, I know of very few
consistent libertarians.  Those who call themselves "Christian"
libertarians have been a favorite target of mine.  See my column below.

While I agree with libertarians on social issues, I believe their position
on pure free markets economics has been empirically disconfirmed over the
years.  As I have written many times in this space and others, Northern
European countries--with high taxes and tough regulations--are living proof
that libertarian economics does not work.  Recent examples of abject
failure are Iceland and Ireland.

All of Europe is now recovering from huge bank failures and far too much
austerity.  Obama's stimulus is the primary reason why the U.S. is now
doing better than Europe.  Except for Spain and Greece, the EU countries
have lower unemployment and lower annual budget deficits than the U.S.
does.  The Obama has brought down our annual budget deficits from 11.1% in
April, 2010 to 4.5 % this month. The Eurozone figure is 3.3 percent with
Greece at 5.3%.  The highest budget deficit in Europe is the UK with 7.6%,
under a conservative government since 2010.  If economic libertarians such
as Paul Ryan had their way, our deficits and unemployment rates would be
much higher.

I have a sense that you are libertarian on social issues, but would not
want to repeal all government programs and regulations.  If so, you are not
"clean."  And neither is Christian "libertarian" Paul Ryan.

Yours for personal liberty and the middle way between economic extremes,

Nick


I first came in contact with the term “libertarianism” during the Idaho
Congressional campaign of 1972.  Steve Symms, under the “philosophical”
tutelage of Ralph Smeed of Caldwell, used this term to describe himself as
he ran on the Republican ticket for Congress.  We became acquainted and
engaged in a feisty but friendly debate, mainly through letters.  As a
congressman he was very helpful in releasing my FBI files (heavily edited)
of my activities during the Vietnam War.

        I’ll never forget one of the libertarian sayings I learned from
Symms. It goes something like this: “A liberal will let you do anything
with your body, but not everything you want to do with your money.  A
conservative will allow you to do anything you want with your money, but
not anything you want to do with your body.  A libertarian will allow you
to do anything you want with both your body and your money.”  The point of
this of course is to show that only the libertarians have a consistent
political philosophy, one based on maximizing personal liberty.

        Most people don’t realize that Symms was pro-choice at that time
and also danced around other libertarian issues such as decriminalizing
drug use and prostitution.  Of course he learned that most libertarian
positions did not set well with the Idaho electorate, so he dropped the
“body liberty” side of the motto above and called himself a “limited
government conservative” for the rest of his quite undistinguished
political career.

        As a result of my interaction with Symms, I researched the topic
and the result was published as a full page article in the *Lewiston
Morning Tribune *(9/22/72).  (Those were the days when local newspapers
still had space for intellectual discussions!) In that article I used J. S.
Mill’s *Essay on Liberty* as a basis for libertarian political philosophy
and critiqued Symms from that standpoint.  Dean Wollenweber, a libertarian
UI graduate student in economics, was given a full page to respond to me a
week later.  He was an especially bright forerunner of now retired UI
economics professor Jack Wenders.

        Sometime in the 1970s Reid Buckley, the brother of Wm. F. Buckley,
spoke at the Borah Symposium.   When he called himself a “Christian
libertarian,”
my immediate response was that this phrase is an oxymoron.  To put the
contradiction as concisely as possible: libertarians affirm the absolute
sovereignty of the self, while orthodox Christians believe in the absolute
sovereignty of God.  This is why consistent libertarians such Ayn Rand and
her followers are atheists. . . .


The achievements of those political parties allied with the Socialist
International constitute an empirical disconfirmation of libertarian
theory. Democratic Socialist, Social Democratic, and Labor parties around
the world have developed the most prosperous and civilized nations in world
history.  They have broken every libertarian economic rule in the book, but
free market* Economist *reports that they outperform the US in nearly all
socioeconomic categories.



GNP growth in 2007 for countries on the strong Euro was 2.7 percent vs. the
U.S. rate of 2 percent. French now have a productivity rate equal to ours;
and Denmark, Austria, the Netherlands, Norway, and Switzerland have
unemployment
rates lower than the U.S.  Of course there is no comparison in terms of
quality of life indices: the lowest crime rates, infant and adult mortality
rates, recidivism rates, and smallest prison populations.  Their schools,
heavily unionized and centrally controlled, are some of best in the world.

 See full article at www.class.uidaho.edu/ngier/libchristian.htm.



On Thu, Aug 22, 2013 at 8:47 AM, Paul Rumelhart <godshatter at yahoo.com>wrote:

> I agree with this.  Let's keep the brand name clean, so it doesn't get
> taken over like the original Tea Party did.
>
> I do see a lot of pushback to Libertarianism by both Democrats and
> Republicans, which makes me think they're on the right track.
>
> Paul
>
>
>   ------------------------------
>  *From:* Joe Campbell <philosopher.joe at gmail.com>
> *To:* Moscow Vision 2020 <vision2020 at moscow.com>
> *Sent:* Wednesday, August 21, 2013 5:19 PM
> *Subject:* [Vision2020] Are you REALLY a libertarian?
>
>
> http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/08/30/773243/-Top-10-Signs-You-Might-Not-Be-A-Libertarian?detail=facebook#
>
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