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<H1 align=center>Libertarianism in One Lesson </H1>
<P align=center><A href="http://world.std.com/~mhuben/libindex.html">Part of the
"Critiques of Libertarianism" site.
http://world.std.com/~mhuben/libindex.html </A>
<P align=center>Last updated 01/04/03.
No, this isn't David Bergland's evangelistic text. This is an outsider's view
of the precepts of libertarianism. I hope you can laugh at how close this is to
real libertarianism!
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".
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!
<LI>
Philosophy
<UL>
<LI>In the beginning, man dwelt in a state of Nature, until the serpent
Government tempted man into Initial Coercion.
<LI>Government is the Great Satan. All Evil comes from Government, and all
Good from the Market, according to the Ayatollah Rand.
<LI>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.
<LI>Government cannot own things because only individuals can own things.
Except for corporations, partnerships, joint ownership, marriage, and anything
else we except but government.
<LI>Parrot these arguments, and you too will be a singular, creative,
reasoning individualist.
<LI>Parents cannot choose a government for their children any more than they
can choose language, residence, school, or religion.
<LI>Taxation is theft because we have a
right to squat in the US and benefit from defense, infrastructure, police,
courts, etc. without obligation. <!-- Taxation is theft! (Unless it is private: then it's called condo fees,
sharecropping, rent, etc.) -->
<LI>Magic incantations can overturn society and bring about libertopia.
Sovereign citizenry! The 16th Amendment is invalid! States rights!
<LI>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!
<LI>The great Zen riddle of libertarianism: minimal government is necessary
and unnecessary. The answer is only to be found by individuals. </LI>[/list]
</P>
<LI>
Government
<UL>
<LI>Libertarians invented outrage over government waste, bureaucracy,
injustice, etc. Nobody else thinks they are bad, knows they exist, or works to
stop them.
<LI>Enlightenment comes only through repetition of the sacred mantra
"Government does not work" according to Guru Browne.
<LI>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.
<LI>Money that government touches spontaneously combusts, destroying the
economy. Money retained by individuals grows the economy, even if literally
burnt.
<LI>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.
<LI>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".
<LI>Central planning cannot work. Which is why all businesses internally are
run like little markets, with no centralized leadership.
<LI>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.
<LI>Government is like fire, a dangerous servant and a fearsome master.
Therefore, we should avoid it entirely, as we do all forms of combustion.
</LI>[/list]
</P>
<LI>
Regulation
<UL>
<LI>The FDA is solely responsible for any death or sickness where it might
have prevented treatment by the latest unproven fad.
<LI>Children, criminals, death cultists, and you all have the same inalienable
right to own any weaponry: conventional, chemical, biological, or nuclear.
<LI>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.
<LI>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?
<LI>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. </LI>[/list]
</P>
<LI>
Libertarian Party
<UL>
<LI>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.
<LI>The "Party of Oxymoron": "Individualists unite!"
<LI>Flip answers are more powerful than the best reasoned arguments, which is
why so many libertarians are in important government positions.
<LI>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.
<LI>Libertarianism "rules" Internet political debate the same way US Communism
"ruled" pamphleteering.
<LI>No compromise from the "Party of Principle". Justice, happiness, liberty,
guns, and other good stuff come only from rigidly adhering to inflexible
dogmas.
<LI>Minimal government is whatever we say it is, and we don't agree.
<LI>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.
<LI>Yes, the symbol of the Libertarian Party is a Big Government Statue. It's
not supposed to be funny or ironic! </LI>[/list]
</P>
<LI>
Political Debate Strategy
<UL>
<LI>Count only the benefits of libertarianism, count only the costs of
government.
<LI>Five of a factoid beats a full argument.
<LI>All historical examples are tainted by statism, except when they favor
libertarian claims.
<LI>Spiritually baptize the deceased as libertarians because they cannot
protest the anachronism: Locke, Smith, Paine, Jefferson, Spooner, etc.
<LI>The most heavily armed libertarian has the biggest dick and thus the best
argument.
<LI>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.
<LI>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.
<LI>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.
<LI>Require perfection as the only applicable standard to judge government:
libertarianism, being imaginary, cannot be fairly judged to have flaws.
<LI>Only libertarian economists' Nobel Prizes count: the other economists and
Nobel Prize Committee are mistaken.
<LI>Any exceptional case of private production proves that government ought
not to be involved. </LI>[/list]
<P align=center>Copyright 2002 by Mike Huben</A>
This document may be freely distributed for non-commercial purposes if it is
reproduced in its textual entirety, with this notice intact.
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