Thread: What is a Libertarian????

Ok I'm going to admait that I have read very little on the subject because I have never been given any reason to by any politician. According to one journalist the Libertarians are mostly old republicans who branched off from the party. This journalist also mentioned that they are very big in Nevada where there is rampant crime, legal prostitution, legal gambling, lax gun laws, Area 51 as well as our nuclear waste deposits. From what I can tell the only thing Nevada has going for it is Vegas and even that is the country's biggest polished terd. Libertarians according to this reporter are for the availability for everyone to have a gun and a meth lab. Libertarians oppose the government intrusion in the drug world and their right to carry a gun, even criminals. I am all for the government being as limited as possible but even if drugs were legal who is going to ensure the public safety when you have a bunch of crackheads with guns running around?. I have never considered pot to be dangerous to the country but Meth is a horrible substance and should not be allowed to be made/sold at will. In China the powers that be had a very big Opium problem and nobody was working just laying around smoking opium and being self destructive. The government ordered a strict crackdown on such people that were the problem and had many executions to "encourage" people to stay away from the drug. I don't agree with the methods but the idea is the same to keep society together. Without some proccess of keeping the nation headed into the right direction what we have is anarchy. I'm not sure anarchy is better than controlled chaos to be quite honest. I like the message of limited government but I think humans need some structure and services like Police and Fire services as well as a military. Nevada is mostly government property and what parts that are not are filled with loons. If anyone has any different opinions I would like to hear them. I have heard a few clips of Bob Barr and he says what people want to hear until you dig deeper into what he stands for.

A libertarian is a person who:

Doesn't believe he has the right to tell other people how to live their lives.

Doesn't believe in the initiation of force to resolve conflicts.

Doesn't believe your property is his property to dispose of as he pleases.

Doesn't want to be your mother, your father, your nanny, your ho'.

Does beleive that government has a positive role to play in society, and that role is to get out of the damn way and merely provide minimum laws and minimum cops to prevent violent crime, fraud, and otherwise protect one's life and property from OTHERS.

Government has no business telling some dumb shit he can't take drugs.

Read the Constitution carefully. It's a very libertarian document. Not perfect, but close.

"Meth"? Let people make it in properly designed and maintained industrial facilities. Damn stupid to make it illegal and thereby force people to make in neighborhoods and populated areas. If stupid people want to put industrial poison in their bodies, it's not my business to stop them.

It's also not my business to provide them with health services when they can't cut it any more. The other side of libertarianism is being firm enough to let stupid people die from their dumb mistakes as a lesson to others.

Originally Posted by WhiteKong78

Ok I'm going to admait that I have read very little on the subject because I have never been given any reason to by any politician. According to one journalist the Libertarians are mostly old republicans who branched off from the party. This journalist also mentioned that they are very big in Nevada where there is rampant crime, legal prostitution, legal gambling, lax gun laws, Area 51 as well as our nuclear waste deposits. From what I can tell the only thing Nevada has going for it is Vegas and even that is the country's biggest polished terd. Libertarians according to this reporter are for the availability for everyone to have a gun and a meth lab. Libertarians oppose the government intrusion in the drug world and their right to carry a gun, even criminals. I am all for the government being as limited as possible but even if drugs were legal who is going to ensure the public safety when you have a bunch of crackheads with guns running around?. I have never considered pot to be dangerous to the country but Meth is a horrible substance and should not be allowed to be made/sold at will. In China the powers that be had a very big Opium problem and nobody was working just laying around smoking opium and being self destructive. The government ordered a strict crackdown on such people that were the problem and had many executions to "encourage" people to stay away from the drug. I don't agree with the methods but the idea is the same to keep society together. Without some proccess of keeping the nation headed into the right direction what we have is anarchy. I'm not sure anarchy is better than controlled chaos to be quite honest. I like the message of limited government but I think humans need some structure and services like Police and Fire services as well as a military. Nevada is mostly government property and what parts that are not are filled with loons. If anyone has any different opinions I would like to hear them. I have heard a few clips of Bob Barr and he says what people want to hear until you dig deeper into what he stands for.

A libertarian is a man who believes that everyone has a right to life, liberty and happiness as long as their rights do not infringe upon the rights of others. I think the constitution and the bill of rights best sums up what a libertarian form of government represents. Does this mean that men and governments are infallible? No, but it does allow a means by which men can come together and address those issues that at that time seem to be most important to forming a more perfect union and leaving to posterity the same ability to address issues of their time. It is not perfect and may very well not ever become perfect for men are not perfect.

This brief outline will give you most of the tools you need to hit the ground running as a freshly indoctrinated libertarian ideologue. Go forth and proselytize!

Philosophy

• 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, according to the Ayatollah Rand.
• We must worship the Horatio Alger fantasy that the meritorious few will just happen to have the lucky breaks that make them rich. Libertarians happen to be the meritorious few by ideological correctness. The rest can go hang.
• Government cannot own things because only individuals can own things. Except for corporations, partnerships, joint ownership, marriage, and anything else we except but government.
• Parrot these arguments, and you too will be a singular, creative, reasoning individualist.
• Parents cannot choose a government for their children any more than they can choose language, residence, school, or religion.
• Taxation is theft because we have a right to squat in the US and benefit from defense, infrastructure, police, courts, etc. without obligation.
• Magic incantations can overturn society and bring about libertopia. Sovereign citizenry! The 16th Amendment is invalid! States rights!
• Objectivist/Neo-Tech Advantage #69i : The true measure of fully integrated honesty is whether the sucker has opened his wallet. Thus sayeth the Profit Wallace. Zonpower 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.
• Enlightenment comes only through repetition of the sacred mantra "Government does not work" according to Guru Browne.
• Only government is force, no matter how many Indians were killed by settlers to acquire their property, no matter how many blacks were enslaved and sold by private companies, no matter how many heads of union members are broken by private police.
• Money that government touches spontaneously combusts, destroying the economy. Money retained by individuals grows the economy, even if literally burnt.
• 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, trusts, and oligopolies are lies spread by the evil economists serving the government as described in the "Protocols of the Elders of Statism".
• Central planning cannot work. Which is why all businesses internally are run like little markets, with no centralized 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 a fearsome master. Therefore, we should avoid it entirely, as we do all forms of combustion.

Regulation

• The FDA is solely responsible for any death or sickness where it might have prevented treatment by the latest unproven fad.
• Children, 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 to kill 300,000 per year in the US like the tobacco industry.
• 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. The US doesn't have enough lawyers, and people who can't afford to invest many thousands of dollars 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 100+ elected dogcatchers and other important officials after 25 years of effort.
• The "Party of Oxymoron": "Individualists unite!"
• 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, poorhouses, 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.
• 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 backwards.
• Yes, the symbol of the Libertarian Party is a Big Government Statue. It's not supposed to be funny or ironic!

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 baptize the deceased as libertarians because they cannot protest the anachronism: Locke, Smith, Paine, Jefferson, Spooner, etc.
• The most heavily armed libertarian has the biggest dick and thus the best argument.
• The best multi-party democratic republics 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.
• Private ownership is the cure for all problems, despite the historical record of privately owned states such as Nazi Germany, Czarist and Stalinist Russia, and Maoist 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 proves that government ought not to be involved.

Originally Posted by Bourne

This brief outline will give you most of the tools you need to hit the ground running as a freshly indoctrinated libertarian ideologue. Go forth and proselytize!

Based on the Libertopian Troika of PH, I'd say that sums their arguments here.

Originally Posted by Bourne

This brief outline will give you most of the tools you need to hit the ground running as a freshly indoctrinated libertarian ideologue. Go forth and proselytize!

Since the writing of that post is clearly beyond you demonstrated mEAGER talent, have the decency to attribute credit to whomever wrote that ignorant piece of tripe.

Hey, I'm all for Libertarians. The more followers they can suck out of the ranks of the conservatives the more meaningless they both become.

Originally Posted by Pragmatist

Hey, I'm all for Libertarians. The more followers they can suck out of the ranks of the conservatives the more meaningless they both become.

While I chuckle aloud at your quip, you make a serious point: libertarian is more about certain principles than a viable form or government.

What most people aren't aware of is that Libertopians consist of two distinct sub groups. Liberturdlians and Libertardlians.

Liberturdlians are the elite intelligensia who set the example for and rule the party. They tend to elicit vast sums of money from the Libertardlians and ride around in lighter than air craft.

Libertardlians are the plebians who blindly follow the Liberturdlians and provide them with offerings of money. They are, in effect, the lemmings of the party.

Originally Posted by Freedom for All

Since the writing of that post is clearly beyond you demonstrated mEAGER talent, have the decency to attribute credit to whomever wrote that ignorant piece of tripe.

Ignorant piece of tripe?

Well, you read it, it peaked your interest and you responded to it. If it were ignorant tripe a wise person would have simply ignored it.