IPFS News Link • Philosophy: Socialism
Libertarian Illusions
• Huffington PostWhen libertarians translate the idea of liberty into the political and economic spheres, they argue that government should operate only to protect personal liberty and not for any other cause. According to libertarians, the sole role of government is to enforce private contracts and to keep the peace so that no one can use force to deprive the liberty of another. In English political theory, this is called the "night watchman state."
By taking an extreme view -- that liberty alone is to be defended among all of society's values -- libertarians reach extreme conclusions. Suppose a rich man has a surfeit of food and a poor man living next door is starving to death. The libertarian says that the government has no moral right or political claim to tax the rich person in order to save the poor person. Perhaps the rich person should be generous and give charity to the neighbor, the libertarian might say (or might not), but there is nothing that the government should do. The moral value of saving the poor person's life simply does not register when compared with the liberty of the rich person.
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2 Comments in Response to Libertarian Illusions
In their delusion, Libertarians "in the lunatic fringe" are totally unaware that only the Government is saving them from themselves! Without the State to protect them from themselves, they rip off each other in the name of Liberty under that delusional belief that it is every individual’s freedom to fight for and protect self-interest, and the Government shouldn’t intervene. That’s their contorted interpretation of free market system.
The latest version of these libertarian "Illusion Aries" is called "Libertarians for Profit". Business-minded libertarian opportunists are now profit-making in the Web regularly. What they do is hate and hit the State that regulates to protect them from themselves, using unprintable words of treason – the more vile the better -- to attract ads and rake revenues. Theoretically, they had renamed themselves "Libertarian R3volutionaries". But in practice, they are actually Ripvolutionaries.
Running wild with freedom, radical Libertarians broke the arm of the Statue of Liberty holding the torch of freedom [see graphic photo at10 reasons the U.S. is no longer the land of the free - by Jonathan Turley 01-15-2012 •
Washington Post http://www.freedomsphoenix.com/News/103334-2012-01-15-10-reasons-the-u-s-is-no-longer-the-land.htmabove]. To see how illusionary they are about Freedom, read this news link written by a brilliant thinker: http://nationalwriterssyndicate.com/content/view/2705/2/