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

F. C. Moulton moulton at moulton.com
Thu Mar 3 00:52:20 UTC 2011


On 03/01/2011 10:51 PM, Kelly Anderson wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 1, 2011 at 7:36 PM, F. C. Moulton <moulton at moulton.com> wrote:
>> You need to take that up with Kelly because Kelly is the one who
>> mistakenly brought the Early USA and libertarianism.
> I strongly stand by my assertion that the early USA most closely
> approximates the libertarian ideal.

The problem with your position is that you are already doing a trade-off
saying some things are not as important as others.  Why give a pass to
slavery but complain about the Federal Reserve?

>  Yes, today's libertarian ideal
> would not include black slaves, and would allow female sufferage,
> would use computers and a bunch of other things that go along with
> today's zeitgeist. 
Today's libertarian ideal does not include slaves; but neither does
yesterday's libertarian ideal.  If there is slavery then it not
libertarian by definition.  No Exceptions. No Excuses.

> There was no Federal Reserve, no Income Tax, no
> abused interstate commerce clause, state's rights were very strong,
Having strong "state's rights" is not part of the libertarian
philosophy.    An individual's liberty can be violated by a governmental
body regardless of size. Today this idea of "state's rights" is often
just a canard thrown up by conservatives.  

> the executive branch was still very weak, there were minimal foreign
> entanglements, the executive order hadn't risen to today's obscene
> abuse, no czars, no special prosecutors,
It should be pointed out that while Anthony Comstock did not have the
title of "Special Prosecutor" his activities were certainly vile and
reprehensible and had much of the same effect.
>  only congress could declare
> war, pseudo wars were not declared by the executive,
So what was the military of the USA doing fighting the Aboriginal
peoples?  Where was that declaration of war?

>  all drugs were
> legal, etc. etc. All of which were moves away from the libertarian
> ideal set by the founding fathers.
The founding fathers did not set up a "libertarian ideal".  They had a
lot of different ideas and did not agree but were able to at least get
free of the British.  What they did was extraordinary.   No-one is
denying that.  But let us not air brush history. And let us not misstate
and distort the libertarian philosophy just to make us feel good about
the early (or current) USA.

Fred

> If George Washington and friends were to pick a political party today
> (judging solely on platform, not popularity), I strongly doubt they
> would pick either Republican or Democrat. I suspect they would go with
> the Constitution Party, or Libertarian or some other similar "fringe"
> party. They were, after all, revolutionaries. There aren't many
> elected Democrats or Republicans that could be described today as
> revolutionaries.
>
> -Kelly
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