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Libertarianism in One Lesson
Introduction
One of the most attractive features of libertarianism is that it is basically a very simple ideology. Maybe even simpler than Marxism, since you don't have to learn foreign words like "proletariat".
This brief outline will give you most of the tools you need to hit the ground running as a freshly indoctrinated libertarian ideologue. Go forth and proselytize!
Philosophy
In the beginning, man dwelt in a state of Nature, until
the serpent Government tempted man into Initial Coercion.
Government is the Great Satan. All Evil comes from
Government, and all Good from the Market, according to the
Ayatollah Rand.
We must worship the Horatio Alger fantasy that the
meritorious few will just happen to have the lucky breaks
that make them rich. Libertarians happen to be the
meritorious few by ideological correctness. The rest can
go hang.
Government cannot own things because only individuals can
own things. Except for corporations, partnerships, joint
ownership, marriage, and anything else we except but
government.
Parrot these arguments, and you too will be a singular,
creative, reasoning individualist.
Parents cannot choose a government for their children any
more than they can choose language, residence, school, or
religion.
Taxation is theft because we have a right to squat in the
US and benefit from defense, infrastructure, police,
courts, etc. without obligation.
Magic incantations can overturn society and bring about
libertopia. Sovereign citizenry! The 16th Amendment is
invalid! States rights!
Objectivist/Neo-Tech Advantage #69i : The true measure of
fully integrated honesty is whether the sucker has opened
his wallet. Thus sayeth the Profit Wallace. Zonpower Rules
Nerdspace!
The great Zen riddle of libertarianism: minimal government
is necessary and unnecessary. The answer is only to be
found by individuals.
Government
Libertarians invented outrage over government waste,
bureaucracy, injustice, etc. Nobody else thinks they are
bad, knows they exist, or works to stop them.
Enlightenment comes only through repetition of the sacred
mantra "Government does not work" according to Guru
Browne.
Only government is force, no matter how many Indians were
killed by settlers to acquire their property, no matter
how many blacks were enslaved and sold by private
companies, no matter how many heads of union members are
broken by private police.
Money that government touches spontaneously combusts,
destroying the economy. Money retained by individuals
grows the economy, even if literally burnt.
Private education works, public education doesn't. The
publicly educated masses that have grown the modern
economies of the past 150 years are an illusion.
Market failures, trusts, and oligopolies are lies spread
by the evil economists serving the government as described
in the "Protocols of the Elders of Statism".
Central planning cannot work. Which is why all businesses
internally are run like little markets, with no
centralized leadership.
Paternalism is the worst thing that can be inflicted upon
people, as everyone knows that fathers are the most hated
and reviled figures in the world.
Government is like fire, a dangerous servant and a
fearsome master. Therefore, we should avoid it entirely,
as we do all forms of combustion.
Regulation
The FDA is solely responsible for any death or sickness
where it might have prevented treatment by the latest
unproven fad.
Children, criminals, death cultists, and you all have the
same inalienable right to own any weaponry: conventional,
chemical, biological, or nuclear.
All food, drugs, and medical treatments should be entirely
unregulated: every industry should be able to kill 300,000
per year in the US like the tobacco industry.
If you don't have a gun, you are not a libertarian. If you
do have a gun, why don't you have even more powerful
armament?
Better to abolish all regulations, consider everything as
property, and solve all controversy by civil lawsuit over
damages. The US doesn't have enough lawyers, and people
who can't afford to invest many thousands of dollars in
lawsuits should shut up.
Libertarian Party
The Libertarian Party is well on its way to dominating the
political landscape, judging from its power base of 100+
elected dogcatchers and other important officials after 25
years of effort.
The "Party of Oxymoron": "Individualists unite!"
Flip answers are more powerful than the best reasoned
arguments, which is why so many libertarians are in
important government positions.
It's time the new pro-freedom libertarian platform was
implemented; child labor, orphanages, sweatshops,
poorhouses, company towns, monopolies, trusts, cartels,
blacklists, private goons, slumlords, etc.
Libertarianism "rules" Internet political debate the same
way US Communism "ruled" pamphleteering.
No compromise from the "Party of Principle". Justice,
happiness, liberty, guns, and other good stuff come only
from rigidly adhering to inflexible dogmas.
Minimal government is whatever we say it is, and we don't
agree.
Government is "moving steadily in a libertarian direction"
with every change libertarians approve of; no matter if it
takes one step forward and two steps backwards.
Yes, the symbol of the Libertarian Party is a Big
Government Statue. It's not supposed to be funny or
ironic!
Political Debate Strategy
Count only the benefits of libertarianism, count only the
costs of government.
Five of a factoid beats a full argument.
All historical examples are tainted by statism, except
when they favor libertarian claims.
Spiritually baptize the deceased as libertarians because
they cannot protest the anachronism: Locke, Smith, Paine,
Jefferson, Spooner, etc.
The most heavily armed libertarian has the biggest dick
and thus the best argument.
The best multi-party democratic republics should be
equated to the worst dictatorships for the purposes of
denouncing statism. It's only a matter of degree.
Inviolate private property is the only true measure of
freedom. Those without property have the freedom to try to
acquire it. If they can't, let them find somebody else's
property to complain on.
Private ownership is the cure for all problems, despite
the historical record of privately owned states such as
Nazi Germany, Czarist and Stalinist Russia, and Maoist
China.
Require perfection as the only applicable standard to
judge government: libertarianism, being imaginary, cannot
be fairly judged to have flaws.
Only libertarian economists' Nobel Prizes count: the other
economists and Nobel Prize Committee are mistaken.
Any exceptional case of private production proves that
government ought not to be involved.
Copyright 2001 by Mike Huben ( mhuben@world.std.com ). This document may be freely distributed for non-commercial purposes if it is reproduced in its textual entirety, with this notice intact.
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