I try to be gentle with Libertarians, I really do. But when one says:
Tell you what, I would not be opposed to a bunch of you and your socialist friends breaking off a portion of the US and forming your own little USSA here.
I must respond thus:
You mean like this?
And when a Libertarian extremist asks:
Why do you insist on imposing your utopian vision on everyone, including those who want nothing to do with it?
The proper response is:
Because those of you who don't want it are a small, distinct (f you'll pardon my placing my metaphorical thumb in your philosophical soup) minority small enough to be written off as the lunatic fringe. Which ain't to say you're crazy, just that there are so very few that DON'T want what you call a welfare state, so few that actually understand what you'd be giving up.What percentage of the population are registered Libertarians? Has the Free State Project gathered their 20,000 commitments? Your "millions of people" rhetoric has no basis in fact. You are, in fact, those that would impose your will on the majority. By your definition, that makes YOU the tyrants.
I fully support the Free State project. Self-isolation by the vanishingly small set of people who agree with Libertarian extremism would be far less disruptive than restructuring the nation along the lines you suggest. And your reintegration into the mainstream once the project fails from lack of internal support would be straightforward as well. In fact, there are so few real Free Staters that they could simply melt back into the mainstream without the collapse of the project ever being noticed.
Posted by P6 at February 11, 2004 07:54 AM
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Comments
Oooooh. Bam. Right in the face!
Suck it, Libertarians!
Posted by Raznor at February 12, 2004 03:12 AMActually, I would actively support forming a socialist state in America, as long as movement in and out was unrestricted. Of course, that is a moot point, because Massachusetts is already a state.
If we believe in the organizing power of the free market, then the best way to prove that would be to polarize two states in America, one socialist, one laizze fair, and then let them duke it out economicaly and population-wise for a few decades. If both survive, great. Let people choose with thier feet.
Posted by Phelps at February 12, 2004 12:17 PMMassachusetts has the 4th highest per capita GSP in the union. Connecticut, IIRC, has the highest. It's absurd to call MA socialist--the only two state-owned industrial facilities in the USA are a cement plant in North Dakota (owned by a regional board) and a uranium enrichment facility in Amarillo, TX.
California, which dissolved its safety net between '78 and the present, has plunged behind 10 other states in p.c. GSP. The reality is that social programs are being dismantled because of constitutional constraints--CA, for example, has a constitutional requirement that 67% votes in the state legislature are required to pass a budget, and after 80 years it's been used by the minority party to create a fiscal trainwreck.
The evidence is that the majority of Americans are getting their libertarian paradise whether they want it or not.
Posted by James R MacLean at February 12, 2004 02:23 PM