Libertarian Davi Barker emails me a link to her (his?) remix of my “24 Types of Libertarian” cartoon, “The 24 Types of Authoritarian.”
S/he has changed all the words in my cartoon, turning it into a mocking of both liberals and conservatives. Good for Davi for posting such a good-humored response.
I’d only make two criticisms: First, the credit could be clearer — it now says “by Davi Barker,” but I wish it had said “by Davi Barker, reusing drawings by B. Deutsch” or something. (It does say it’s a “parody” of my work, but “parody” doesn’t normally imply “only the words have been changed, otherwise it’s not my work.”) Not a big deal, just a preference of mine.
Secondly, I like the reworking of “the Island” into “Drug Warrior,” but Dani should have redrawn the crumpled-up piece of paper in his hand and made it into a pipe. C’mon, folks — details count! (I liked the little police hat and vest added to my gun-totin’ dude, though.)
That’s pretty… bold.
It’s pretty funny. Especially when the comic is already utterly inconsistent three panels in. Apparently everyone that knows what’s best for other people is an evil authoritarian forcing their views on others. Unless they’re a libertarian, then they just happen to know what’s best for everyone, whether they want it or not. At least that’s what I get from comparing panels one through three. Strangely enough, if we had an actual democracy that did what the people that elected the politicians wanted, Libertarians would be even more furious.
Also strange how guy in panel five hates brown people, but the only AA guy in panel seven is the “entitled” minority. Of course we know libertarians are NEVER racist, because they say so themselves. Loudly and often.
Libertarians have a pretty goofy idea about what the word “authoritarian” means. People that are trying to help the poorest and most vulnerable among us generally aren’t authoritarian. It just doesn’t work out that way.
Yeah, “Entitled”, “Bereaved parent”, and “Green Zealot” are pretty nasty.
Wait, didn’t a bunch of libertarians call Amp’s cartoon a collection of strawmen? Well, WTF is this if not a collection of flaming strawmen?
Doesn’t the credit say something clearer now?
Yes, the credit is clearer now; to his credit, he changed it in response to this post.
Here’s what I don’t get….
Amp’s comic’s title was perfectly understandable. It’s about the different aspects of Libertarians that we meet. We know that they’re Libertarians because they tell us that’s what they are.
Who is Davi Barker’s version of the comic about? Are Authoritarians a loud, obnoxious, distasteful – albeit small – identifiable political group? Is he talking about Democrats? Republicans? Greens? All of the above?
How is this in any way a response to or a parody of the original?
I agree with JThompson. This comic is incoherent and, as a result, meaningless.
The comic is for Libertarians. It took me a while to figure out what ‘authoritarian’ meant in this context because I’m not a Libertarian; it’s not a word I know in that context.
Jake:
Yes, all of the above. I realize that leftists and conservatives like to see each other as polar opposites, and in a sense you are, in that you want to abridge our liberty in different ways. But to libertarians, you all fall into the category of people who want to give the government more power, i.e. authoritarians. The comic is about exactly what it claims to be about: The many and varied types of authoritarians.
It’s funny—many leftists accuse us of being closet conservatives because we’re not on board with your tax/spend/regulate agenda. But when we criticize leftists and conservatives equally, we’re incoherent. Them’s the breaks, I guess.
Brandon, you didn’t understand Jake’s post @6, I take it.
People call themselves “Libertarians”. People don’t call themselves “Authoritarians”. It’s as if Amp’s comic was titled “The 24 Types of Jackbooted Thugs” but was really about Libertarians.
Brandon,
What’s incoherent is that nobody except the tiny group that is Libertarians will understand what the hell it’s about. There is no apparent consistency to any particular political group. Amp’s comic labeled the political group being lampooned in a manner that anybody could understand and then went on to criticise that single group in consistent detail.
The reason it doesn’t work as parody is that the original was a critique from a leftist POV whereas the parody is a critique of everything that is not Libertarian.
It fails as anything other than, perhaps, an inside joke. It certainly fails as either parody or response to the original. It shows a lack of understanding of the base from which the comedy of the original comes.
The problem isn’t with any of the individual panels, the problem is with the comic as a whole. It is meaningless to anybody who is not a libertarian. The original is understandable to anybody, libertarian or otherwise.
Yes, fine. But then it is neither a parody nor a response. It is something that uses another person’s art work to make an entirely unrelated comment.
Uh, did anyone else notice that the policeman’s star is the 6 – pointed Star of David? That creeped me out, especially under “Just following orders”. Not that there shouldn’t be Jewish policemen/policewomen, but what does it mean in that particular context, especially with someone who is just following orders? Unfortunate implications…
Okay, but it’s a funny inside joke. Amp’s was better. No argument about that. But as Jake (or myca I can’t remember) has pointed out several times Republican’s/Conservatives don’t really want to limit government power. They just want to use it for other things than Democrats. There is a small political constituency that would like less government. They usually call themselves libertarians and probably think this is funny. It could be more accessible if all 24 types were either liberal or conservative, but that’s not really the point.
As for no one calling themselves “authoritarians”; it’s true but I’m having a hard time remembering a social problem that republicans/democrats didn’t want to fix with some sort of government action. (unless you count tax cuts. But republicans treat tax cuts as the cure to everything but male pattern baldness) People are often well described by labels they don’t pick. For instance Bill Kristol doesn’t call himself a war monger but he’s never found a foreign policy problem that couldn’t be best fixed by military action.
Anyway, I thought several of them were funny. I’d have liked the Green Zelout more if they’d called out whole foods / local co-ops by name. Elitist snob was great though.
ST, I noticed, but my assumption is that it was done innocently and without thought to any implications. Some people just find six-pointed stars easier to draw than five-pointed stars.
If the person were a professional cartoonist, I’d suggest that they should be thinking about possible unintended implications as a matter of course whenever they draw a star of David in a strip, but of course in this case the person isn’t a pro.
Jake, I don’t really see any problem with a cartoon that’s an inside joke. I mean, it’s a problem if their goal is broad-based appeal, but I doubt that was the goal here.
You know what I appreciated? The lettering isn’t bad. Usually when people reletter my strips like this, they do an awful job, and I kind of just hate looking at them for that reason.
My problem is that it is subtitled as “A Parody of ‘The 24 Types of Libertarian’ from http://www.leftycartoons.com”
It’s clearly a joke, and clearly an inside joke. It just doesn’t seem like much of a parody. It would be a lot more effective if it was subtitled “Inspired by and based on…” I don’t see how it pokes fun at the original. The format is very different. Instead of lampooning a single identifiable political group it lampoons everyone (not just polictical groups. For example, Teachers) that is not libertarian.
The only thing that leaves a ghost of a trail to parody is that the original artwork was used. The fact that he used the original artwork and went for humor doesn’t make it a parody. It doesn’t even make it a response. “Hey, I liked your drawings so I used them to make a point of my own,” is not parody.
I don’t dispute that it’s a joke. I don’t claim that it isn’t an inside joke. Because it is an inside joke. But I don’t see how it can be labeled as a parody.
Now get off my lawn! Property Rights uber alles!
Credit due, that was surprisingly well-done for a remix. Usually I see these comic-remixes and there has been no attempt made to make the fonts look good or to make the transition seamless. This one I’d actually believe as a stand-alone comic.
And yes, I got a smirk in a few spots.
But I have to agree, the problem is that “Authoritarian” isn’t really a sensible group beyond the basic concept of “people who disagree with Libertarians”.
Jake:
You’re right, it’s really not a parody. They would have been better off using your wording, or even calling it a “remix,” and avoiding the p-word.
And yeah, the word “authoritarian” seems very much like groupthink at work.
@Ampersand – I don’t think it’s fair to call Authoritarian groupthink – it’s just community jargon. I don’t see the term any more or less useful than, say, “The Patriarchy”.
I couldn’t say if it’s equivalent to “patriarchy” — I’m not familiar enough with the way libertarians use the word to know if there’s a similar academic/intellectual pedigree to the word, or if it’s really just a term used in online communities.
But I agree, I should have said “community jargon.” That’s a better (and less insulting) way of putting what I had in mind.
Disagreeing with Libertarians is more problematic than you seem to indicate. It’s not like we’re talking about colors or what to have for dinner tonight. We’re talking about the laws that will govern our lives. Certainly, someone who uses those laws to restrict our liberties, can be called an Authoritarian, whether he sees it that way or not.
Just because I think it’s a good idea to do something, that does not give me the authority to make my neighbor do it as well. Yet, some people do think like that, and they are indeed Authoritarians, whether they like the term or not.
@Mordecai
Yes, but the simple concept of “collecting taxes to run a social safety net” is frequently lambasted as “authoritarian”, because as every libertarian says, taxes are collected at the point of a gun.
I have trouble avoiding rolling my eyes at that point.
Yes, yes. The world is divided into Libertarians and Authoritarians.
As long as I’m back here…
Are Libertarians really against professional teaching? (panel 4)
Are Libertarians really against representative democracy? (panel 2)
(Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed the remix as a whole and many of the types are funny. I just don’t think that it’s a parody and panel 4 is pretty disturbing in its implications.)
Well, not to mention that since the world is divided into Libertarians and Authoritarians, and Libertarians oppose representative democracy, everyone in favor of representative democracy is an Authoritarian.
So, I’d guess that includes 100% of everyone here?
—Myca
@Silenced is Foo
Collecting taxes is authoritarian, because it is collected under threat of violence for non-compliance AKA “under the barrel of a gun.”
@Jake Squid
Though it isn’t entirely clear in the comic, I think the panel was referring to government funded education as a rationale for taxation.
@Myca
Democracy is just another form of rule. Serious libertarians prefer anarchism.
My take on panel 2 was that it riffed on the “tyrany of the majority” idea. The fact that 51% of the elected representives oppose X doesn’t mean I have no right to X.
”
That’s a great philosophy. For living in complete isolation.
The fact that 51% of the elected representatives oppose stealing other’s property by force doesn’t mean that I have no right to steal other’s property by force.
The fact that 51% of the elected representatives oppose vivisection doesn’t mean I have no right to vivisection.
The fact that 51% of the elected representatives oppose poisoning the water supply doesn’t mean I have no right to poison the water supply.
The fact that 51% of the elected representatives oppose pelting ugly people with rocks doesn’t mean I have no right to pelt ugly people with rocks.
Do you see how that philosophy fails any group of more than one person? We, collectively and not perfectly, have decided that nobody has a right to poison the water supply as well as a whole host of other things in order to live together as harmoniously as possible.
You know what protects us from the tyranny of the majority in the US? The constitution and the judiciary. Not perfectly, but a lot better than the proposed libertarian system ever could. Or would want to.
Well, the thing is, it’s a balance. A government is only valid if it is mostly the government that most people want. The right to govern derives from the consent of the governed, & etc.
Obviously, we (or, at least, the decent among us) don’t want a government where a 51% majority can vote to deny a minority the right to marry (just as an example).
But neither do we want a government where the majority has no ability to ever regulate air or water pollution for the public good.
We can call the total oppression by the majority ‘authoritarianism,’ sure, but then I guess the total oppression by the individual would be called ‘libertarianism.’
This is why I like a balance. Balances are good.
—Myca
Jake,
If 51% of the population thinks gay sex is icky does that mean I can ban it?
If 51% of the population thinks abortion is wrong?
If 51% of the population thinks making fun of Jesus is wrong?
If 51% of the population thinks swearing is wrong?
If 51% of the population thinks being fat is unhealthy can I make puplic policy punish fat people? What if that same 51% thinks it’ll save them money on health care and they are this personally affected?
How about if we make it 99.9% of the popluation? How many people need to agree before denying Gay Mariage goes from wrong to right? My guess is that you and i both agree that number doesn’t exist.
Myca’s right, balance *is* good. Perfect Utopia World doesn’t exist and we can’t design a system where everyone starts at the same place, equal and even. So pure libertarianism goes in the same heap as pure democracy, pure communism, or pure whatever. As far as I know there isn’t any ideaology proposed that hasn’t run into some real world situation that required a special execption to the rule.
Being “libertarian’ doesn’t mean you oppose everything government has every done, anywhere ever. Although like any small movement there are plenty of purists that like to argue stupid and ill thought out positions. Like government roads = Totalitarian police state.
Reason.Com has a pretty decent sample of ‘mainstream’ libertarian thought. So does Radly Balko, so does Coyoteblog. At least IMO.
@Myca
Total oppression by an individual is monarchy. Libertarianism is against any form of oppression. You’ve got to escape the dichotomy of “rule by many” or “rule by one”, and consider the possibility that it would be better if people didn’t assert authority over one another, either singularly or in groups.
“Yes, but the simple concept of “collecting taxes to run a social safety net” is frequently lambasted as “authoritarian”, because as every libertarian says, taxes are collected at the point of a gun. I have trouble avoiding rolling my eyes at that point.”
I also think using that expression is unfortunate, because it can be confusing and lead to a strawman. Society has changed since the 19th century, and the time when traitors were put to death. It looks like the point regards whether there is a choice in the payment or not. It is meant to say that you are stolen money, rather than voluntarily contributing something towards the common good. As it is a crime to steal, or take property by force, without consent, having to pay taxes is like being robbed by a bandit on the road; hence taxes are collected at the point of a gun.
I don’t think any Libertarian makes that argument. Also, a government usually does not have any legitimacy under Libertarian theory; the people you call mainstream are actually quite inconsistent, and their views at times despicable. They can be found to support people like George W. Bush, horrors like the war in Afghanistan, torture, and hold a host of quite nasty views, particularly on immigration. So I wouldn’t turn to them, or I would be more specific on where they stand.
As such the right to govern principle invalidates any majoritarian democracy, since the consent of the governed is not enquired about. Elections are leader choices, they do not mean approval of government as such. Indeed, you have already appointed part of the population, the decent part, as the rightful ruler of the other, the undecent. Tribalism is a major part of the current system. Yet, Obama and Bush have very similar policies, and what liberals are shouting now, the conservatives were just 2 years ago.
Of course. Things the government does that one likes (firefighters, roads, arresting my neighbor if he dumps garbage into my river upstream)? OK. Things the government does that one doesn’t like (taxation, statutory rape laws)? Oppression, sheeple!
No, it’s not, and it’s sad that you think that.
We’ve had this argument about a thousand times here, but granting large corporations the right to do as they please on an individual level and requiring individual citizens (not governments, remember) to attempt lawsuits after the fact (rather than regulatign their behavior beforehand) results in oppression.
This is the Libertarian model in a nutshell.
My example, from a thread about a year and a half ago:
There are plenty of collective problems that require collective solutions.
AND there are individual problems that require individual solutions.
Balance, baby, balance. This it what I’m talking about.
—Myca
I can see that you’re confused about what I’m saying. Legality doesn’t make anything “right” or “wrong”. That’s the purview of morality. There are lots of laws that I disagree with. However, and this is important, just because I disagree with a law or I’m not legally permitted to do something that I’d like to do does not oppress me.
Also, if 51% of the people in this country (or their representatives) make it legal to kill you, you will not legally be killed. This is where the constitution would protect you from the tyranny of the majority.
I guess I am confused, wouldn’t that depend on what the activity is?
@Mythago, I see some of that in a lot of ‘libertarians’. But I’m not sure where you got the opposition to statutory rape laws.
Maybe I’m confused by the way the terms are being used.
What label would you use to describe someone that
1. Placed a high standard for proof before they’d agree that something was a collective action problem or could be be solved by government intervention.
2. Placed a high priority on economic freedom and property rights.
3. Objected to government intervention on principle.
4. Opposed regulation on principle.
5. Opposed the use of force on principle.
6. Opposed the criminalization of victim-less crimes.
7. Liked firearms.
8. Was willing to accept a significant negative outcome if the process maximized individual freedom.
that’s sort of my working definition for ‘libertarian’.
Precisely. Illegality or, depending, legality is a necessary but not sufficient condition of oppression.
Precisely. Illegality or, depending, legality is a necessary but not sufficient condition of oppression.
Surely it is neither necessary nor sufficient. There are plenty of forms of oppression that are not legally codified.
When Libertarians stop arguing that the white-owned hospital with the only ER in 40 miles is oppressed if laws require them to serve black, brown, yellow, and red people, I’ll stop laughing until I choke at that kind of statement.
Legality does make things right or wrong; just ask any CRS riot police officer in France about those migrants he’s hunting. You’ll get an idea how ‘neutral’ your cherished bureaucratic State is.
FYI, your criticism is preempted by libertarian legal theory. Of course there are things you should never do, and things that should never be done to you. What those things are is precisely the object of libertarian thinking. Because if you CAN do something, but you’re forbidden from doing it, then that is clearly oppressive.
The constitution does not forbid that someone be put to death by the State. In fact, I seem to recall that there is a thing called the death penalty, and that not once has any constitutional argument been brought forth that the State has no right to end your life.
Even then, this is only a piece of paper. What if the Constitution had mandated that anyone above 50 be put to death as a useless member of society? What then?
As some point you will be faced with the choice of telling me to shut up or agreeing with me that there are things that can never be done to anyone, no matter what. And this will be when you enter libertarian territory.
When people like you stop conflating all libertarians with racists, maybe we can have a real and serious conversation about things like taxation and the imperialist murdering state.
That’s an unfair response. Do you support the Civil Rights Act of 1964? My impression was that the vast majority of Libertarians do not.
—Myca
You’re right. I don’t support any legislation, even when the legislation says you should not discriminate against people of color. As I said above, I don’t disagree with the content of it, although some racist ‘libertarians’ do, but with the way it is done. Legislation is the use of force in everyone’s affairs. In my legal theory, force can only be used to stop crimes and see that reparations are paid. I do not see racial discrimination as a crime, but as a vile thing to do. There are a lot of actions that are disgusting, and yet are not crimes. Using force to stop them is going over the board; you wouldn’t strike a man because he has insulted his neighbor, for instance.
Yet, should we completely let him off? A lot of libertarians would say that because it’s legal to do it, it’s all okay and it’s up to us to just shut up and take it. I’m thinking of Walter Block and his book ‘Defending the Undefendable’. I happen to disagree, and I’m not the only one. Below is a link to Charles Johnson’s important work “Libertarianism Through Thick and Thin.” I think it can be said that Libertarians were thin on the original cartoon, and I’ve noticed the reference to left libertarians as lone shouters. Considering that they are organizing more and more to have a media presence in the form of the Centre for a Stateless Society (C4SS.org), I think that was uncalled for.
http://www.thefreemanonline.org/featured/libertarianism-through-thick-and-thin/
Yeah, I think that you’re right about that, CharlesS.
The constitution, though, does forbid a law to put you, specifically, to death. Also, if you’re not aware of a single instance of a constitutional argument being brought forth that the state has no right to end your life you haven’t been paying attention. The argument that it is cruel and unusual punishment has certainly been used in that cause. For example, in 1972 the Supreme Court of the United States of America ruled ruled that the dealth penalty violates the Eighth Amendment, ,which protects Americans from “cruel and unusual” punishment. So, yeah, the constitution would prevent the government from implementing a law that says, “Mordecai shall be put to death.”
Okay, Mordecai, but then your response to Elusis was incredibly out of line, and she deserves an apology.
What she was doing was not “conflating all libertarians with racists,” she was imputing opinions to you which you actually hold, and asking you about the consequences of those opinions.
And, for what it’s worth, she’s right. This is an actual problem, and actual oppression, that Libertarianism does not have a reasonable answer for.
—Myca
What’s funny is that Amp focused on a small group and got 24 ideas and probably could have got more, whereas Barker included both left and right and yet still managed to run out of ideas.
That makes no sense. “Crimes” (and types of crimes) are not inherently, universally recognizable as criminal (yes, even murder, which is frequently problematized by contexts like war, assisted suicide, self-defence, etc.). What is considered criminal or not in a given social context is negotiated and collectively (though not always unanimously) determined – hence legislation, because it’s damned hard to keep track otherwise. (Note: I am not pro-current mainstream legal and justice models either, I just find your suggestion that racial discrimination is more akin to an “insult” than a crime and therefore has no business being legislated like “true” crimes short-sighted and rife with opportunities to perpetuate oppression.)
Also, just because someone is a racist libertarian does not make them ‘no true libertarian’. Being a libertarian does not exempt anyone from being a racist douchewad.
One would almost think that Amp is a good cartoonis and the other person isn’t….
;)
Ideas :-]
@Myca
Any libertarian who supports corporations (or anyone for that matter) “doing as they please” if it physically harms others needs to reconsider their political label. I will grant that there are many in the libertarian movement who reject outright any sort of environmental laws, but they just need to continue shedding the ideological remnants of their conservative past.
Also, using the violence of the law to threaten someone into serving certain customers is wrong. Threatening those who have harmed no one with violence if they don’t comply is the very definition of “oppression” as I understand it, though you may have other definitions.
@Jadey
The libertarian understanding of “crime” is very different from the traditional usage of the word. When libertarians talk about criminals they mean those who agress against others. In other words, victimless “crimes” such as disassociation with others does not count.
Whether something is a “crime” or not is of course not universally recognized. (Thieves and murders sometimes don’t see anything wrong with their actions). But that does not mean that the violation it isn’t real and tangible to those who have a keener perception of things. Yes, sometimes questionable and confusing situations need a democratic consensus making process to help determine justice. But when people get together to pass laws that grant authority to agress, then those people become the violators, or “criminals”, themselves.
What would the libertarian solution be to the problem I posted in #35, then?
My understanding is that an outright rejection of environmental regulation is an opinion in the overwhelming majority within libertarian circles. You may not believe that, and may, in fact, favor collective solutions (coercive ones, if necessary) to collective problems, as I do, but I think that’s an opinion in which you differ with libertarianism.
—Myca
Discrimination is a victimless [non-]crime? News to me. The libertarian definition of crime still sounds like a definition that has been warped to suit a particular kind of individual who represents a very specific (and privileged) demographic. In other words, same old same old.
Heh. Would that make you one of the “Elitist Snobs” depicted in panel 3 of the knockoff?
@Myca
Environmental law can be libertarian. If certain chemicals are determined to be harmful to people’s health, then it would be justifiable to mandate that these chemicals not be released into the air and water. Regulation is not inherently aggressive if it is used to protect from those who may harm others.
Libertarianism is a big world. People who identify with the term range from Glen Beck to Noam Chomsky. Perhaps in the US Libertarianism has been more conservative, but elsewhere that isn’t necessarily the case.
@Jadey
If person A chooses not to interact with person B, who is the victim? I don’t think we have warped the definition of the word here at all, it seems pretty clear cut. How can I violate someone by not interacting with them?
@Jake Squid
You think I’m an elitist snob because I think killing the innocent is wrong even if a murderer doesn’t think so? Yeah, I guess I’m an elitist snob instead of a moral nihilist.
I’m wondering how that line is any different than the words given to the elitist snob in the knockoff.
Compare
to
You are claiming that there are, objectively, actions which are crimes. And you’re claiming that although there are those of us with whom you’re speaking who don’t see that that is so, that you know better.
There is a tremendous similarity in those two lines.
I’m not calling you an elitist snob, Davi Barker is calling you an elitist snob.
I guess Libertarians are Authoritarians, too.
What if the constitution mandated that we worship rabbits as gods? What then?
It might make a good SF story (you should really check out Logan’s Run) but it doesn’t make it more than an absurdly unlikely chance of being put into place.
If history has proven anything, it’s that there is nothing that can never be done to somebody, no matter what. Or are you speaking morally?
“You are claiming that there are, objectively, actions which are crimes.”
Violence is violence, whether you see it and recognize it as such or not. Reality does not change based on perception. For example, poisoning water and air can be scientifically determined in a very real and tangible way regardless if the industries want to acknowledge it. Do you disagree?
“And you’re claiming that although there are those of us with whom you’re speaking who don’t see that that is so, that you know better.”
What of it? I don’t make any apologies for writing like I know what I’m talking about. In debate, ignorance is not a virtue.
“I guess Libertarians are Authoritarians, too.”
Go look up the word “authoritarian”…. I don’t think it means what you think it means. If it does, then you’ve got a non sequiter on your hands.
You really don’t see the similarity between those two statements? You really don’t see, if libertarians mostly believe the same thing wrt this issue that you do, that panel3 is calling libertarians authoritarians? It’s certainly calling you an authoritarian.
You know better than the rest of us because you have a “keener perception of things.”
I would never call you an elitist snob because of that – we all have things that we think we know better than the masses. I was pointing out the absurdity of panel 3 as related to a stated libertarian position.
Violence is violence, whether you see it and recognize it as such or not.
Indeed, and collective shunning (particularly when, directly or indirectly, backed by actual violence) is a form of violence, whether you see and recognize it as such or not.
In debate, ignorance is not a virtue.
Nor are empty claims of superiority.
First you claim that the constitution is the safeguard from tyranny, then you dismiss questions regarding the content of the constitution as irrelevant. Have you never considered the possibility that the content of the constitution itself may violate people’s rights? Or do all rights for you derive from the constitution?
His point I believe is that there are actions that can justifiably be prohibited via threat of violence, regardless of what the constitution says or not. So yes, “morally” speaking I suppose, is your only source of how humans should interact that piece of paper?
I started out by talking about conditions in the USA at comment #27. Look at that last paragraph. Since then I’ve been talking about the reality of the current form of government in the USA. So, yes, the Constitution of the United States of America is the ultimate authority (in theory, in reality that would be the SCOTUS) of what is a right (not morally right, a legal right) in the USA.
The constitution protects Mordecai from his primal fear of a law being passed legalizing his death, specifically.
The constitution, however, does not allow a law calling for all of those over 50 to be put to death any more than it enshrines rabbits as our gods.
I really didn’t think the connection was that obscure. Perhaps I should put a list of comments to reference at the bottom of each of my comments.
Relevant Comments:
27, 36, 46, 60
@ Jake Squid
Umm both statements are in English? You are really stretching here to say that because I think some people perceive reality clearer than others, that I also think people “don’t know what’s best for them” in the sense that others should dictate their lives. For example, a doctor may perceive what a carcinogen is better than the average person. And no matter what the average person may think, the carcinogens are real. How you leap from this to authoritarianism is baffling.
I really don’t think I do, but thanks for the compliment.
Ah, I see. So you’re perfectly fine with the currently defined crimes? Or do you think that you have a better idea of which things are crimes than we have collectively decided? You don’t advocate for imposing your lists of things that are crimes and are not crimes on me?
Then what the hell are you talking about?
If I only ate organic lentil tofu dogs the amount of methane and hydrogen sulfide that would be produced would accelerate global warming by decades.
Myca:
I’d like to see some documentation of this. I’m not challenging you directly – I don’t know enough about libertarianism to challenge you on that. But it seems to me that in so far as environmental laws prevent you from damaging someone else’s property, or public property, they’d be in accord with what I understand as the main principles of libertarianism.
@ 12, Joe writes:
Joe writes:
In the case of Republicans I’d say that this is pretty accurate. For conservatives, I’d say that they want to use government powers for those purposes specified in the Constitution, and that this would satisfy both the condition of being for different things than Democrats and the condition of limiting government.
Conflating “Republican” and “Conservative” is a mistake. If it was true, there’d be no Tea Party movement.
@Charles S
How is collective shunning, when not backed with violence, a form a violence? It seems to me that violence requires violence.
@Jake Squid
Yes, the constitution is the ultimate legal authority on what is legally right. But being an anarchist, questions of legality deriving from the political system do not interest me. My political philosophy goes much deeper than trying to understand what a bunch of men wrote in 1776.
J
@Jake Squid
First off, are you a member of congress? If not, then why are you associating yourself with a “we” into the collective who decided what a legal crime was or not? If you want to know whether I have a better idea of what a true crime should be than them, the answer is yeah I think I do. And unless everything that is illegal now you want to stay illegal forever, you too think you know a better way than the legal status quo.
All I ask is that you don’t threaten violence against me. Perhaps this is “imposing my list” upon you, but I think you would ask the same towards me.
Ah, so you admit that your comment #65 was without merit and, in the end, not relevant to the interaction between Mordecai and myself. Thanks.
If I impose violence upon you, is it a crime for you to impose violence upon me. In defence of your property or person?
Because members of congress are representatives of the people. People who advocate for laws that we collectively find beyond the limits of our tolerance are not re-elected and, eventually, the abhorrent law is changed.
Yes. And Davi Barker is calling me an elitist snob and an authoritarian, too. The weird thing is that he’s calling himself and libertarians authoritarians.
The world is divided into authoritarians who are libertarian and authoritarians who are not libertarian, I guess.
Perhaps I haven’t made myself clear. Questions of legal authority and legality deriving from the constitution are irrelevant to me in regards to what one should or should not do. However the content of the constitution is important to show that it violates rights itself. You are the one pointing to the constitution as your safeguard. I was merely trying to show you how empty your philosophy is if that is how deep it goes.
In my opinion violence in self defense is justified, while aggressive violence is unjustified. Do you disagree?
Masebrock,
Could you state your definition of violence?
Collective shunning is an action which causes harm to another person just as much as selling leaded gasoline is. You believe the later can be legitimately regulated, but not the former, but you haven’t given any recognizable reasons for why we should make this distinction.
Which people do they represent? I certainly never appointed anyone to represent me. If you claim to have appointed Bush as your representative in regards to public policy, can I accuse you of war crimes?
You are (amazingly enough) conflating wanting people not to hurt eachother with “knowing what is best for them” and the implied tyrannical conclusions. I cannot fathom the philosophical hoops you are jumping through to get to this point. Could you explain, step by step, why you have come to the conclusion that libertarians are in fact authoritarian?
@ Charles S
It is not much different from what I perceive to be the standard definition. Violence is physical actions that cause a degradation in another person’s use of their body. Violence must involve interacting with another human being, either directly (fist to the face) or indirectly (such as selling poisoned food). If we go down the route that non-interaction with another is a form violence if the person would have been better off had we interacted with them, I doubt you would accept the conclusions this leads to. Should I be held legally accountable for not saving the victims of the Oklahoma City bombings? My non-interaction killed many. Am I guilty of violence?
Shunning someone is not a violent act anymore than this is.
Libertarians know the best form of government and I do not. Therefore I’m too stupid and libertarians should run society.
Libertarians know what constitutes crime and I do not. Therefore I’m too stupid and libertarians should establish the legal code.
Elitist snob says, “Obviously people are too dumb to know what’s best for them so experts should run society.”
Which one of these is you? Which one of these is not analagous to the others?
I don’t think anyone should “run society”…that is a major point you must be missing.
The legal code should be established to abolish all authority, but is a misstatement to call that an “authoritarian” legal code.
I suppose your second statement is not analogous because it is the only one that isn’t a complete mischaracterization of my position.
So if I burn leaded gasoline in my car, I am interacting with everyone who ever comes into contact with that lead sufficiently that the government should be allowed to employ violence to prevent me from doing so, but if I refuse to serve a customer in my restaurant and demand that they leave that is a non-interaction and therefore unregulatable?
You seem to be exhibiting the typical libertarian problem of an inability to comprehend or acknowledge a collective action issue. A massive group of people systematically engaging in a relatively minor harm ends of causing a substantial harm. So no one favors banning restaurant owners from refusing service to anyone they please, except for classes of people who have been historically systematically refused service. If you are driving cross country and you stop at a hotel and the desk clerk tells you to go elsewhere, the harm done to you is less than the harm that would be done by forbidding desk clerks from refusing service to customers, but if you and everyone in your class is routinely refused service in many hotels, then you and others in your class suffer a substantial harm. The necessary social and governmental response to a systematic harm is very different from the necessary response to an isolated harm.
I don’t find your reductio ad absurdam at all relevant, as I don’t believe that absolutism is particularly relevant or helpful in considering policy. I don’t see a ban on systematically refusing service to members of suspect classes as inherently leading to duty to report laws (if you happened to know what McVeigh was planning) and certainly not to good Samaritan laws (if you were in Oklahoma City and just refused to help with rescue efforts), and I don’t think there is even a name for the laws that would criminalize my failure to prevent the bombing (never met anyone involved, never lived anywhere near there), so I think the chance that the sorts of civil rights laws that we have had for more than 40 years will ever lead to such a law being passed that will criminalize our collective failure to know about and prevent the Oklahoma City bombing is nil. So arguments that we can’t regulated the treatment of classes of people by public businesses because that is logically indistinguishable from punishing people for anything bad that happens anywhere merely demonstrate that your capacity for reasoning or your good faith are not to be trusted.
Burning lead leads to harm. It is a small harm, but because many people do it all at once it can lead to a substantial harm. Burning lead should be regulated. Refusing to serve someone is not the cause of any tangible harm. If it was even a small harm then it could be regulated, but the harm of non-interaction is zero. And zero times a million people all at once is still zero.
If person A chooses not to interact with person B, how can there be any tangible harm? How can one person violate another via not interacting with them?
The question of the way things ought to be invariably becomes a question of philosophy, not just policy. If you are going to say that people should be held accountable for what they don’t do, you’ve got to back that up with a universal ethical assertion as to WHY it ought to be that way. Knowingly embracing an ethic that falls apart upon close inspection is to negate the importance of rationality.
I never meant to imply that the Civil Rights Act will inherently lead to such laws. What I meant was the logical conclusions of applying that ethic leads to such crazy hypothetical scenarios…questioning my good faith in this matter was unnecessary. I’m asking why you personally wouldn’t support those crazy hypothetical laws I mentioned, since they seem to be in line with your ethical assertion. I’m wanting you to explain the fundamental ethical difference because I don’t see it.
Masebrock, so you are OK with someone dying because a hospital/clinic/doctor refused to serve them because they are gay/brown/Jewish/trans/non-native English speakers? That is what Elusis (#40) was asking, but all the responses have been about “interactions” as if we are talking about ignoring the neighbor.
I’m not “okay” with it in the sense that I would approve or applaud such an action. But every law has an implied death threat for non-compliance. If you ask me if it should be legally justifiable to point the gun of the law at the doctor and and say “help the patient or else”, I would say no, that is an action worthy of physical retaliation against. To threaten the doctor to action is aggression, oppression, and form of slavery. If that is justified, then any sort of slavery is justified if the crops they grow feed people.
I understand you want to protect life, and I do to. That is why we have to have radical revolutionary reforms against a political system build upon violence, not try to expand its power through more oppressive laws.
Me: So arguments that we can’t regulated the treatment of classes of people by public businesses because that is logically indistinguishable from punishing people for anything bad that happens anywhere merely demonstrate that your capacity for reasoning or your good faith are not to be trusted.
You: What I meant was the logical conclusions of applying that ethic leads to such crazy hypothetical scenarios…questioning my good faith in this matter was unnecessary.
Only a fool doesn’t question the good faith of random strangers on the internet, but I will accept that it is your reason and not your good faith that I should distrust. Oddly enough, the specific weakness of your reasoning is the form that often appears in people who are overly devoted to Reason. The belief that you can adequately understand the nature of the best society through the application of philosophy and logic, without acknowledging the multitude of intractably conflicting goals that permeate actual societies, all of which need to be met and balanced in some manner, is a failure of reason that arises out of a love of Reason.
The idea that a doctor who allows a patient to die because of bigotry (or even just personal animus) should not be subject to any penalty because penalties = state power = violence and violence should only be used to combat violence and inaction is never violence by definition is a beautiful example of this. Your definitions and premises lead you deductively to an absurd conclusion, but you hold to your absurd conclusion because you are confident your logic is sound. Since you recognize that your conclusion is absurd, you can only offer the empty promise that come the revolution the state monopoly on violence will wither away in a manner that will further decrease violence rather than increasing it and that that will provide us with a world where doctors will no longer intentionally allow their patients to die out of animus, but no state regulation will be needed to ensure this.
Inaction can cause harm. People suffer harm as a result of someone else’s inaction all the time. To deny that is to engage in humpty-dumpty-ism, a common form of irrationality of people who are overly devoted to reason.
In any case, the principle that you are failing to incorporate into your philosophy is this: Both the doctor and the restaurateur bear a relationship to the activities that the refuse to perform that you and I presumably don’t bear to saving lives either in Oklahoma city or in a hospital, nor to the serving of food.
People who represent themselves as performing a specific function, and willingly perform that function for the broader public are particularly likely to directly cause harm by inaction, so people in such positions are subject to regulation, although rarely to criminal prosecution. People are not forced to be doctors and provide medical services, doctors are not forced to go into emergency medicine or oncology, people are not forced to run hotels or restaurants, people are not forced to build and run factories. If we regulate any of those activities to a degree that is not unnecessarily burdensome or arbitrary, and forbid people who refuse to obey those regulations from continuing to claim to provide that service, that really isn’t the equivalent of slavery.
Anyone who doesn’t want to serve food to black people is free to get out of the food service industry. Anyone who doesn’t want to perform life saving operations on critically injured gay men is free to get out of the emergency surgery field. Field slaves are not free to quit being field slaves. This is so obvious it shouldn’t need saying, but your deductions from your premises have led you so far astray that you need this explained to you.
Claiming that the legal obligations of doctors, architects, restaurateurs, or factory owners to not do harm through specific sorts of malicious inaction within the practice of their profession is the equivalent of chattel slavery seems to me to be the product of bad reasoning of the sort that comes from an adoration for Reason.
…And then as a further oddity you favor environmental regulations which place many positive requirements on people, requiring them to maintain paperwork, to maintain equipment, to install specific safety measures, to build factories to code to not abandon dangerous materials.
If I am forbidden from leaving drums of benzene in my factory yard for so long that the drums rust out and spill benzene into the earth, how is that any different from slavery in your philosophy? No one says I can’t put the benzene drums in my factory yard, and no one is harmed if I do, so it is not my action which causes harm or for which I might be punished. Instead it is my inaction that causes harm when the drums rust and the benzene spills. But if inaction is never violence, why should I be subject to state violence to force me not to engage in that inaction?
Those are a pair of fine comments, Charles.
And you hold up what you perceive to be non-absurd conclusions that are admittedly based on no logic. However I find your conclusions to be worse than absurd, but actually criminal. We are at an impasse; I think your conclusions are absurd, and you think mine are. You admit that your conclusions are based on non-reason, while admitting mine is based on an personal moral standard.
If you have no such standard for judgment, and you have admittedly abandoned reason as a means of determining a standard, how can you possibly say that my conclusions and my process is flawed? How can you possibly say anything other than “Do what thou wilt. Kill a child, what does it matter. We can’t use logic and reason to figure out whether you should or not.”
You keep repeating it, but it doesn’t make it so. It is logically (oops, sorry for using that word) impossible for person A to harm person B by not interacting directly or indirectly with person B.
Are you saying that it is their capacity to perform the functions that makes them obliged to perform the functions? Could a farmer be forced to labor for others since others depend on eating his crops? Oh, but I forgot that your ethics are admittedly not based on reason and cannot be applied in any cohesive manner.
And by “free” you mean you’ll force them to stop working at the point of a gun. Liberty!
Why would it be odd that I think people should be legally obligated not to harm others via pollution? (btw, no one should be obligated to produce paperwork)
Aggressive law vs defensive law, it is central to libertarianism. It is okay to say “You must not harm others.” Sure call it a positive obligation, but the historical usage of the word “slavery” has always related to chaining up the innocent, not chaining up the criminals.
Um, but the results of your actions DID harm others. You were the root cause of their harm, tt just took a long time for it to finalize. Sort of like shooting a gun with a really really slow bullet. If you wait long enough people may think that the bullet just pushed itself out long ago, but they would be wrong.
Ah, but you did put the benzene there didn’t you? Actions to violence. Try again.
You and Mark (over on this other thread) make a nice matched pair of examples of the dangers of intellectual absolutism at the expense of human decency.
x
You are essentially criticizing me for not being an anti-reason moral nihilist, while at the same time you are calling for a government based on your view of “human decency”. That is insane. And it’s not at all absolutist for you to insist that discrimination should be banned, but it is oh so narrow minded of me to say that everyone should interact with others freely.
God forbid that I have desired societal goals and and I base them on logic. I should have known that only you are allowed to advocate for your societal goals, and only you are allowed to logic and reason during this debate. When you do it, it’s not absolutism I suppose.
I think continuing this exchange is not likely to be useful. Charles, I know, is not planning to post in this thread any further (although he may change his mind).
Masebrook, I’ll ask you to take a 24 hour break from this thread.
And if either of you return to this thread, please dial it back — WAY back — from comments #92 and #94.
Which opinions am I holding? Can’t you fucking understand that just because I’m not gonna bash a racist’s head every time he says nigger doesn’t mean I approve of the conduct? And that’s what those racist libertarians do, they hide behind the legality to imply that it’s socially acceptable behavior. They don’t even have a concept of a culture that could be disgusting. To them the very idea of things that you shouldn’t do even though you have a right to do them is impossible. That’s the very point raised by Charles Johnson. Do you even read what I say or should I just stop discussing things with you?
Legislation is not the creation of the people; clearly you have not heard of the Patriot Act. Also, murder cannot be made right by legislation, nor does the people wish it. You are using particular cases in which murder does not happen to cast doubt on whether murder is always wrong. In natural law, words like murder and theft are normative concepts and cannot fail. If you find yourself in a situation in which you believe something is murderous and yet is not wrong, then that thing must not be truly murderous. Thus, if assisted suicide is murder and murder is wrong, yet assisted suicide is not wrong, then we cannot conclude that murder is not always wrong as such, but rather that assisted suicide is not truly murder. In fact, assisted suicide, if you think about it, is the voluntary giving up of life, whereas murder is its forcible taking. Thus there is a fundamental difference in what counts as murder, as opposed to murder being sometimes okay, sometimes not okay.
The parenthetical aside about murder was an attempt to head off the usual counterexample given for “actions which are inherently criminal no matter what” (although, yes, properly I ought to have said “killing someone” if I was going to be perfectly clear, as “murder” itself suggests a criminal sort of killing someone), and not even close to the main point of my comment. I’ve followed the rest of the conversation about libertarianism and crime and can see that this conversation is pretty much useless.
I love how the black guy is the entitled one and the woman is the indoctrinator/public school teacher.
I’m sure it’s just coincidence.
And yet we’re being the dogmatic one’s here? How does that work? If someone suggests the government can solve some problems but not others s/he’s a shreeking, statist, totalitarian, but if someone says the government can never ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, etc. solve any type of problem ever s/he’s some kind of open-minded, non-ideologue?
And just so we’re clear:
The guy in very first panel doesn’t fit that definition in the least. I’m sorry, but you don’t get to redefine words just because you read Atlas Shrugged in high school.
Did I call you dogmatic? To me, authoritarian is only a category describing those relying on authority. There is such a thing as non-dogmatic authoritarians. I don’t mean the term to be an insult. I’m sure there are well-meaning people on the other side of the fence.
How does refusing all legislations work, but accepting even one doesn’t? I seem to recall someone above saying that the right to govern comes from the consent of the governed. Well, apply this formula and you end up with the fact that the State as such is not legitimate, because its mode of operation is territorial rule, rather than rule based on consent. Until now, it has just been presumed that we were all one nation and we all agreed to be governed, as per some kind of magic. But it isn’t true and so the legislation is a product of a wrongful machine. Therefore I don’t accept anything a legislation say, not in the way that people blindly do. We all need to judge the legislation before we obey it. Bad things happen when good people do nothing.