<div dir="ltr"><font size="4" face="georgia, serif">Hi Paul,</font><div><font size="4" face="georgia, serif"><br></font></div><div><font size="4" face="georgia, serif">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.</font></div>
<div><font size="4" face="georgia, serif"><br></font></div><div><font size="4" face="georgia, serif">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. </font></div>
<div><font size="4" face="georgia, serif"><br></font></div><div><font size="4" face="georgia, serif">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.</font></div>
<div><font size="4" face="georgia, serif"><br></font></div><div><font size="4" face="georgia, serif">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.</font></div>
<div><font size="4" face="georgia, serif"><br></font></div><div><font size="4" face="georgia, serif">Yours for personal liberty and the middle way between economic extremes,</font></div><div><br></div><div><font face="georgia, serif" size="4">Nick</font></div>
<div><br></div><div><p class="" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:10pt;font-family:'Times New Roman';color:rgb(0,0,0);text-indent:0.5in"><font size="5"><br></font></p><p class="" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:10pt;font-family:'Times New Roman';color:rgb(0,0,0);text-indent:0.5in">
<font size="5">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.<br>
<br><span lang="en-us"> </span>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.<br>
<br><span lang="en-us"> </span>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.<br>
<br><span lang="en-us"> </span>As a result of my interaction with Symms, I researched the topic and the result was published as a full page article in the <i>Lewiston <span lang="en-us">Morning </span>Tribune </i>(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 <i>Essay on Liberty</i> 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.<br>
<br><span lang="en-us"> </span>Sometime in the 1970s Reid Buckley, the brother of Wm. F. Buckley, spoke at the Borah Symposium. When he called himself a “<span lang="en-us">Christian </span>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. . . . <br>
<span lang="en-us"> </span></font></p><p class="" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:10pt;font-family:'Times New Roman';color:rgb(0,0,0);text-indent:0.5in"><font size="5">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<span lang="en-us"><i> Economist </i>reports that they outperform</span> the US <span lang="en-us">i</span>n <span lang="en-us">nearly </span>all <span lang="en-us">socio</span>economic </font><span lang="en-us"><font size="5">categories.</font></span></p>
<p class="" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:10pt;font-family:'Times New Roman';color:rgb(0,0,0);text-indent:0.5in"> </p><p class="" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:10pt;font-family:'Times New Roman';color:rgb(0,0,0);text-indent:0.5in">
<font size="5"><span lang="en-us">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 </span><span lang="en-us">Denmark, Austria, the Netherlands, Norway, and Switzerland have</span> unemployment rates<span lang="en-us"> lower than the U</span>.<span lang="en-us">S.</span> 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.<br>
<br></font><span style="font-size:x-large"> See full article at <a href="http://www.class.uidaho.edu/ngier/libchristian.htm">www.class.uidaho.edu/ngier/libchristian.htm</a>.</span><font size="5"><br><span lang="en-us"> </span></font></p>
</div></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Thu, Aug 22, 2013 at 8:47 AM, Paul Rumelhart <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:godshatter@yahoo.com" target="_blank">godshatter@yahoo.com</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div><div style="font-size:12pt;font-family:times new roman,new york,times,serif">I agree with this. Let's keep the brand name clean, so it doesn't get taken over like the original Tea Party did.<br>
<br>I do see a lot of pushback to Libertarianism by both Democrats and Republicans, which makes me think they're on the right track.<br><br>Paul<br><div><span><br></span></div><div><br></div> <div style="font-family:times new roman,new york,times,serif;font-size:12pt">
<div style="font-family:times new roman,new york,times,serif;font-size:12pt"> <div dir="ltr"> <hr size="1"> <font face="Arial"> <b><span style="font-weight:bold">From:</span></b> Joe Campbell <<a href="mailto:philosopher.joe@gmail.com" target="_blank">philosopher.joe@gmail.com</a>><br>
<b><span style="font-weight:bold">To:</span></b> Moscow Vision 2020 <<a href="mailto:vision2020@moscow.com" target="_blank">vision2020@moscow.com</a>> <br> <b><span style="font-weight:bold">Sent:</span></b> Wednesday, August 21, 2013 5:19
PM<br> <b><span style="font-weight:bold">Subject:</span></b> [Vision2020] Are you REALLY a libertarian?<br> </font> </div> <div><br><div><div dir="ltr"><a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/08/30/773243/-Top-10-Signs-You-Might-Not-Be-A-Libertarian?detail=facebook#" target="_blank">http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/08/30/773243/-Top-10-Signs-You-Might-Not-Be-A-Libertarian?detail=facebook#</a><br>
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