The following is a well-written rebuttal written by Dwight Zitek to a ranting political scribe belonging to Boise Weakly
Yes we heard you Bill. You think that we, as Libertarians, are loony. It even has a nice bit of alliteration to it. But witty writing and banter aside I find that your article and overall characterization of us to be a lot like a night with any of the politicians that you so venerate, a lot of style and very little substance. I am sure that you would agree that in order to make the world a better place we need to understand it. And you have a lot of misunderstanding about us.
The most glaring is that Gov. Butch Otter is NOT a libertarian, no matter how much he self-professes. Clement Leroy (that C.L. “Butch†Otter to the unwashed) only has a 67% rating from Cato, a libertarian think tank, and a 20% rating from the ACLU. So Unlike libertarians he is only 2/3 friendly to our economic positions and 1/5 friendly to our “progressive†social positions. Sounds like a republican to me. Hey, wait a minute, he IS a Republican. Hey, wait a minute, didn’t he defeat Libertarian candidate for Governor Ted Dunlap in the last election? How is he a libertarian again? Is it because he says so? If he said he were a fish would you believe him?
Libertarianism is a philosophy first, a methodology second, and then an ideology. While those in the mainstream play politics and broker the lives of the little people over a glass of sherry. Libertarians come to the conclusion that no one has the ability or the right to run their own lives better then the individual. I certainly am not wise enough to run your life Bill. I don’t want to tell you what to smoke, drink, have sex with, how much money to save, how to spend it, where to spend it, what to spend it on, and how to earn it. Too bad you don’t extend me the same courtesy. Okay, you do extend it me, how did you put it, half of the time, the other half is fair game for force and violent control.
Without property rights there are no human rights. The fact that I own my body, the fact that it is my property is the concept from which all “human rights†are derived. It is why it is wrong to rape, murder, and enslave. If I own my body then I also own its products, the results of my time, talent, energy, and the efforts of my past. From this comes the prohibition of theft, trespass, and fraud, in general what are considered property crimes. This includes one of the most egregious property crimes, taxation. I also own my future. This explains why the violations of liberty are considered violoations of human rights. If you control my future I have no liberty, no ability to make choices or I have my choices sharply curtailed. Slavery robs people of the control of both their bodies and their futures, a violation of their property rights, from which the human rights concept is derived.
While some libertarians engage in the ancestor worship of the founding fathers, most do not. Libertarians, like most people in our society went to 12 years of government indoctrination camps called public school. And in public school we were all taught a common mythology about our ancestors. While some of these mythologies are based in fact, others are downright lies, libertarians, just like everyone else can get confused. However, in general, coming from a society in which the king was ordained by god to do whatever he wanted, and arguing for the relative radical individualism of the enlightenment period, many of the founders were libertarians in their thinking. Some were not. The Jeffersonians, that crazy group that brought us the bill of rights, were definitely libertarian. The Hamiltonians, the state worshiping guys that brought us central banking, were definitely not. Benjamin Franklin, libertarian in principal and in practice. Patrick Henry, the 1700’s answer to Pat Robertson, not so much. The constitution also failed wholly to do its most important job, reign in the power of the federal government. I implore my fellow libertarians to not forget that as well.
Bill, It’s not about hating government, it’s about seeing it for what it is. Like George Washington said, “Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.†Libertarians recognize that the government is in the same moral category as the mafia. But it’s worse then the mafia in its behavior. The mugger will steal your wallet, but then he won’t placate you by dripping honeyed slogans about the common good in your ear, the taxman will.
Just like the “progressivesâ€, Libertarians hate monopolies, and the high prices, inefficiencies, and low qualities that they bring consumers. The state is monopoly on growth hormones. Yet you claim to be afraid of monopolies. You are so afraid of monopolies that you want to create the mother of all monopolies to fight monopolies?!? Excuse me if that sounds just as daft as the conservatives going to war for peace! And yet you call us loony? The state has monopoly control education, security, defense, the control of quality, banking, and so forth, and in every case they create the very problems that you attribute to the marketplace.
Take the FDA, for example, a monopoly over the quality control of medicines. What if I have a medicine that was approved for use by a group of market scientists that tested it? What if I needed this medicine to save my life? Could I take it? No that would be illegal. I must die, according to the state.
I don’t want to tear down, the broken-down, worthless heaps of bureaucratic junk that is the government. I just want to be free from being forced to fund them. If they are so wonderful then people will fund them voluntarily, and if they are not so wonderful they will wither and die on the vine, no tearing down needed. Libertarians of all stripes are not lazy, many of us are business owners, entrepreneurs, investors, and labor. These are the very people who actually work to solve the problems of humanity. Who, while in search of profit, provide endless goods, services, employment, and opportunity to our fellow man. Lazy is pretending that the problems of man can be solved by throwing money, yours and the money you stole from your neighbors, and multi- acronymic government agencies at them rather than rolling up your sleeves and starting a business that solves these problems.
The evidence that an unregulated free market is more efficient and less corrupt is legion. I know that statism demands that you choose not to see it, but it is becoming blinding. Who do you want to get your food from? The state or a merchant who is competing with other merchants to bring you the cheapest, safest, and highest quality food in the world? If you choose the former then you, like many people who died of starvation under Joey Stalin, would quickly find great use for non- state food.
Finally, Let’s lay to rest the idea that Enron, Halliburton, or central banking are in any way children of the free-market. If you receive government funding, if the government protects you from your competition, if you are given sweetheart backroom deals, with the government, in order to run your “businessâ€, if you are defrauding your customer, with the protection and the approval of the government, regardless of what you call yourself, you are not part of the marketplace. You are part of the state. If Halliburton said they were a fish would you believe them?
You are right when you say that the constitution does not require political philosophies to be founded in reality. It certainly is the reason that the progressive movement, the fiction by which everyone can live at the expense of everyone else has enjoyed such success. You can hide from reality forever, my friend, but you will eventually have to face consequences. My wish for you is that you survive another year without becoming another victim of the state. I hope consequences don’t prove me wrong.