Prometheus 6

It's the referral logs again. I see someone hit P6 looking for little "L" libertarians and I MUST examine the result set of that query.

Edward Cone, by way of Jeremy at Jeremy's Jeremiad!

The libertarian consensus is not a utopian movement. It’s a mindset, not a policy, vague but recognizable on sight – yet it has to be grounded in reality to work. A starting point is the fact that personal freedom demands personal responsibility and self discipline. This isn’t about abdicating moral authority, it’s about privatizing it. At our house we home school the kids, we just outsource the academics.

Principles endure, but needs and resources change, so solutions under the libertarian consensus need to be dynamic instead of static. Entrenched interests, served by both major political parties, are dug in against liberty. We need to root them out without dismissing the various good ends toward which they set off before getting trapped in their trenches.

Part of the dynamic worldview is accepting the law of unintended consequences. That’s key to its counterutopianism. Less regulation might lead to more litigation, for example. Ending the Drug War would save lots of money that is now spent on interdiction, enforcement, and incarceration, but it will cost money, too, to invest in healthcare for drug users and public education about the consequences of drug use.

The libertarian consensus doesn’t mean government spending and social programs are going to go away. Responsibility for yourself does not preclude responsibility to your neighbors and nation. People want to be left alone, but that’s an amorphous concept. There’s “left alone,” as in, adults who aren’t hurting anyone else should be left alone, and there’s “left alone,” as in, left alone to die, or left alone without any real opportunity to join the productive populace, or left alone when your job goes to Vietnam.

Uncle at Say Uncle

It should be noted that I am not a Libertarian but I do like some aspects of Libertarianism. However, Libertarianism can't work. Clayton Cramer opined that he watched the TV show Cops just to remind him of why Libertarianism cannot work. You will always have the lowest common denominator ruining it for everyone. Face it, not everyone is nice guy like me.

… This is why I refer to myself as a libertarian with a small L. Libertarianism has some good ideals:

Small government
Personal responsibility
Valuing liberty among all else

All good stuff!

But other things that need work:

Opposing all welfare
Opposing public education
Wanting to ban all taxes
Aligning themselves with some of the whacko militia groups

You have to work on this stuff guys to be taken seriously. Yes, welfare, education, taxes and other things need some major work. But we can't do without them.

David Hitt at The Hittman Chronicles:

Libertarians come in two primary flavors: Capital L Libertarians, and small L libertarians. Capital Ls demand that Libertarianism be pure. There is no room for compromise, or incrementalism. If something violates Libertarian dogma, even a little, it must be rejected, no matter how pragmatic it may be.

Small L libertarians, like me, believe in the basic principles of Libertarianism, but temper it with pragmatism. We see nothing wrong with making incremental changes, snatching back our freedom a bit at a time, the way it was taken from us. We don't consider "compromise" a filthy word.

You might think that the Big Ls and the small Ls would be happy to work together. You would be wrong. Big Ls despise the small Ls, and see them as traitors to the cause. They call us LINOs, Libertarians In Name Only, and scream "Statist!" at us every time we propose anything that isn't pure enough for them. ("Statist" is the worst insult one Libertarian can hurl at another. It's almost as bad as calling a Democrat a capitalist.)

It may seem strange that people would reject help from others who agree with them on 90-95% of the issues, so let me give you a specific example. The subject of drunk driving came up on an FSP mailing list. A drunk driver who manages to make it home without killing himself or someone else, or damaging property, hasn't committed any crime in the perfect Libertarian world, and so should not be punished. Few people will accept the idea that he should be allowed to continue driving drunk until he does kill or maim someone, except for the big Ls. They insisted that there should be no penalty until after the damage was done. (We specified, early on, that we were talking about people who were really drunk, not the ridiculous .08 that the feds have forced on the states.) And they insisted that when the drunk did finally kill or maim someone, he should only be charged with that crime. Adding to the penalty for "having the politically incorrect amount of alcohol in their bloodstream" was unconscionable, and akin to convicting someone of a hate crime. The concept of reckless endangerment was rejected. We set up a private poll, and the vote was 7-2 to eliminate all drunk driving laws. I was one of the two, and on viewing the results, I could feel my small L suffering even more shrinkage.

Glen Whitman's Libertarian Page

What's this I hear about "minarchism" and "anarcho-capitalism"?

Libertarians come in two main flavors: minarchists and anarchists.
Minarchists believe that government should be reduced to the smallest size necessary to protect individual rights of person and property. Minarchists are willing to tolerate a low level of taxes and some other forms of government power (such as the power to subpoena witnesses), even though these practices are strictly speaking violations of individual liberty, because they are necessary to prevent even greater violations of individual liberty that would take place otherwise. Minarchists usually support a state-run military, police force, and justice system.

Anarchists (or anarcho-capitalists, a term used to distinguish them from anarchists of the socialist or bomb-throwing variety) oppose the existence of any government, even a small one. Anarcho-capitalists frequently argue that having a government at all necessarily violates the non-aggression ethic (see definition 2 above). They contend that it is a violation of individual liberty to take people's money or property from them, even if the money or property will be used to defend their remaining money and property. Anarcho-capitalists usually envision private enforcement agencies and courts that would compete for the voluntary business of individuals seeking protection against the violation of their rights by others.

In case you're wondering, I consider myself a minarchist.