[ExI] General comment about all this quasi-libertarianism discussion

[Samantha Atkins]

On 02/28/2011 11:21 PM, F. C. Moulton wrote:
> On 02/28/2011 07:35 PM, Kelly Anderson wrote:
>>   The early USA is
>> the closest approximate,
> To say that the early USA was the "closest approximate" really stretches
> the meaning of the word "approximate"  almost to the point of
> absurdity.  The early USA was not even close to libertarian.  Just think
> for a moment about the huge number of slaves, the second class legal
> status of women,

Actually, in that it strongly supported freedom and individual rights it 
was extremely libertarian.  That the slavery and women's rights things 
were not also worked out yet was an artifact of the times.  Many of the 
founders actually did discuss that slavery was repugnant to their world 
view but felt that the issue could not be addressed head on at the time.

>   the Alien and Sedition Acts just to name a few.

That was passed by the Federalists and strongly opposed as 
unconstitutional albeit not successfully.  In particular read the papers 
of Jefferson on this Act.

>    Even
> during the late 1800s when slavery was supposed to be illegal there were
> still Jim Crow laws in many states and in some areas there was de facto
> slavery.  Not to mention censorship under Comstock.  And let us not
> forget how the government of the USA disregarded treaties and badly
> treated the Aboriginal peoples.

That there were many failures does not in the least change the fact of 
the strong support for individual rights and severely limiting 
government power that this country was based upon.
> Just because the early USA might not have been as bad as some other
> countries does not mean that the early USA was libertarian.

As the term was not even invented yet it would have been difficult to be 
more rigorously "libertarian".


- samantha