_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Libertarianism in One Lesson Part of the "Critiques of Libertarianism" site. http://world.std.com/~mhuben/libindex.html Last updated 05/24/04. No, this isn't Michael Huben's explanatory text. This is a satirist's view of his exposE of libertarianism. I hope you can laugh at how closely this approximates its inherent nature! Introduction One of the most attractive features of libertarianism is that it is basically a very simple ideology. Maybe even simpler than Marxism, since you don't have to learn foreign words like "proletariat," and certainly more so than Scientology. This brief outline will give you most of the tools you need to hit the ground running as a freshly indoctrinated libertarian proselyte. Go forth & convert via fallacious argument & fear mongering! Doctrines of our Blind Faith * In the beginning, man dwelt in a state of Nature, until the serpent Government tempted man into Initial Coercion. * Government is the Great Satan. All Evil comes from Government, and all Good from the Market, as borne out by repeated objectivist double-blind observation, according to Aynatollah Rand, founder of our "Neo-Tech" methods of navel contemplation from an anal orientation. * The only politically correct objectivists are Libertarian. Any other preference is subjective & incorrect. * We must worship the Horatio Alger fantasy that only the unmeritorious few will be unlucky enough to be impoverished, while Libertarians deserve any profiteering from the misfortunes of the politically incorrect. * Government shall not own things because entities cannot own anything. Except for corporations, partnerships, holding companies, cartels, estates, foundations & any other entity turned a blind eye by government. * Thou shalt not force things onto your progeny. Except for language, residence, school, religion, and any other thing as long as it pays no heed to government. * Thou shalt not initiate lethal force. Except for an abortion--shed all the innocent blood you want! * Thou shalt not commit fraud. Except when challenged to reconcile our paradoxical self-contradictions, or that libertarianism is the flip side to communitarianism on the corporatist coin. * Taxation is theft because everybody, especially illegal immigrants, have a right to squat in the US and benefit from our infrastructure, sanitation, emergency services etc. without obligation. * Import tariffs are theft because foreigners have a right to exploit the natives, etc. or pollute the environment no end in making & transporting their goods--lest libertarianism be exposed as a fraud without such hidden subsidies. * Seek Guru Browne's holy writ "Government Doesn't Work!" and ye shall find Nirvana. * Magic mantras can overturn society and bring about libertopia. Sovereign citizenry! The 16th Amendment is invalid! States' rights! Free markets for multinational free-loaders! * Parrot our mantras & doctrines, or ape Ayn Rand religiously, and you too will be a singular, creative, reasoning individualist. * Objectivist/Neo-Tech Advantage #69i: The true measure of fully integrated honesty is whether the sucker has opened his wallet. Thusly is P.T.Barnum paraphrased by the Profit Hubbard. Scientology Rules Nerdspace! * The great Zen riddle of libertarianism: minimal government is necessary and unnecessary. The answer is only to be found by individuals. Government * Libertarians invented outrage over government waste, bureaucracy, injustice etc. Nobody else thinks they are bad, knows they exist, or works to stop them. * Only government is coercive force (no matter the number of Indians killed by settlers to acquire their property, or blacks enslaved & sold by private companies, or union members' heads broken by private police, such as Pinkerton) except when libertarian governments are complicit in such force by letting the free market provide a remedy. * Banks that government creates spontaneously combust, destroying the economy. Banks created by individuals grow the economy, no matter how many have gone bust. * Private education works, public education doesn't. The publicly educated masses that have grown the modern economies of the past 150 years are an illusion. * Market failures & imperfections are sabotage by Zionist central bankers who claim to be Jews but are not, so that their hired goons such as Hitler will have an excuse to kill real Jews, steal their wealth & give the Zionists an uncontested claim to the land of Israel: * Central planning cannot work. Which is why all businesses internally are run like little markets, with no centralised leadership. * Paternalism is the worst thing that can be inflicted upon people, as everyone knows that fathers are the most hated and reviled figures in the world. * Government is like fire, a dangerous servant and an allophobic master. Therefore, we should entirely avoid putting it to work for us, as we do all forms of combustion. Regulation * The FDA is solely responsible for any death or sickness that might have been prevented had it allowed hucksters to make curative claims for their latest diet craze or supplement. * Successful, unconvicted criminals, death cultists, and you all have the same inalienable right to own any weaponry: conventional, chemical, biological, or nuclear. * All food, drugs, and medical treatments should be entirely unregulated: every industry should be able kill 300,000 per year in the US like the tobacco or aspartame industries, and then allow owners of such corporations to hide their assets from the courts via revocable trusts offshore in the Cayman Islands. * If you don't have a gun, you are not a libertarian. If you do have a gun, why don't you have even more powerful armament? * Better to abolish all regulations, consider everything as property, and solve all controversy by civil lawsuit over damages since the US doesn't have enough lawyers. People who can't put up to outspend multinationals to destroy & fabricate evidence, or bribe witnesses, judges & jurors in lawsuits, should shut up. Libertarian Party * The Libertarian Party is well on its way to dominating the political landscape, judging from its power base of 500+ elected dog catchers, sanitation commissioners & other important officials after 35 years of effort. * The Party of Oxymoron: "Individualists unite!" - "Party Politics is Theft!" * Flip answers are more powerful than the best reasoned arguments, which is why so many libertarians are in important government positions. * It's time the new pro-freedom libertarian platform was implemented; child labor, orphanages, sweatshops, poor-houses, company towns, monopolies, trusts, cartels, blacklists, private goons, slumlords, etc. * Libertarianism "rules" Internet political debate the same way US Communism "ruled" pamphleteering. * No compromise from the Party of Principle; Justice, happiness, liberty, guns, and other good stuff come only from rigidly adhering to inflexible dogmas [& Objectivist/Neo-Tech psychopathologies akin to Scientology]. * Minimal government is whatever we say it is, and we don't agree. * Government is "moving steadily in a libertarian direction" with every change libertarians approve of; no matter if it takes one step forward and two steps backward. * Yes, the symbol of the Libertarian Party is a Big-Government-Statue. It's not supposed to be funny or ironic! * The very Constitution that expanded the power of U.S. central government, is the "sina qua non" of limited government; This is why Benedict Arnold was not a Libertarian for preferring to fight for the goal of "Free & Independent States" as proclaimed by the Continental Congress in the Declaration of Independence, & as organised pursuant to the Articles of Association setting forth a loose Federation. [However, States' Rights' advocates like him were soon alienated by the Articles of Con-federation with its implicit desire for an eventual goal of "supreme executive, legislative & judicial power" for the "national government" as envisioned by the framers of the Draft Constitution in Article II.] Political Debate Strategy * Count only the benefits of libertarianism, count only the costs of government. * Five of a factoid beats a full argument. * All historical examples are tainted by statism, except when they favor libertarian claims. * Spiritually baptise the deceased as libertarians because they cannot protest the anachronism: Locke, Smith, Paine, Blackstone, Jefferson, Acton, Spooner, v.Mises, Hayek etc. * The most heavily armed libertarian has the biggest stick and thus speaks the most softly. * The best multi-party democratic republic, Switzerland, should be equated to the worst dictatorships for the purposes of denouncing statism. It's only a matter of degree. * Inviolate private property is the only true measure of freedom. Those without property have the freedom to try to acquire it. If they can't, let them find somebody else's property to complain on. * Corporate ownership is the solution for the biggest problems, despite the historical record of corporate states such as Nazi Germany, Communist/Oligarch Russia, and Red China * Require perfection as the only applicable standard to judge government: libertarianism, being imaginary, cannot be fairly judged to have flaws. * Only libertarian economists' Nobel Prizes count: the other economists and Nobel Prize Committee are mistaken. * Any exceptional case of private production despite government interference proves that government ought not to be involved. * Debate strategy in Haiku form: Let us call white black; then let us say that black's white - and call it a night.