libertarian

The satirically titled article Calling all Stalinist-Jeffersonian-Bozoian Libertarians published on Wednesday immediately attracted the ire of contemporary socialism's apologists who stormed the "add a Comment" box on the article's page like they were storming the Bastille.

The article posited that in today's politico-philosophical world, anyone who embraced the oxymoron of "libertarian socialism" should have no problem with accepting the absurdity of "Stalinist-Jeffersonian-Bozoian Libertarianism."

Apparently it's becoming ever more popular to create crossbred mutant coercive philosophies and then attempt to smuggle them into unsuspecting minds by incorporating the "libertarian" label.

A recent article, Politics not as usual, cheered on Iowa Libertarian Party candidate for governor Eric Cooper who candidly admitted that his goal wasn't to win but to get enough votes so the major parties would "poach our issues in order to steal our voters.”

His rationale? "The Populists in the 1890s and the Socialists in the 1910s won almost no elections, and yet most of the major planks of their platforms were eventually implemented."

Jim Lark, writing in the November issue of Libertarian Strategy Monthly, tells about running into "lone wolf libertarians," whom he defines as people who "live in an area that they believe is devoid of fellow Libertarians."

He then tenders his tenfold list of things these lonely lobos can do to offer value to the Libertarian cause.

Or, more precisely, to the Libertarian Party.

David Boaz, writing in the Cato@Liberty blog, noted that a recent Gallup poll pegged the voting-age population of America at 23% libertarian.

He also noted that since the word "libertarian" isn't well known, pollsters divine their libertarian numbers by asking whether people are "fiscally conservative and socially liberal."

He also quotes mainstream politico Governor William Weld telling the 1992 Republican National Convention, “I want the government out of your pocketbook and out of your bedroom.” So does that make him "libertarian?"

If not, how would you define "libertarian?"

The Canadian Parliament is mulling a measure that would amend that country's Immigration and Refugee Protection, allowing foreign military deserters a safe harbor in Maple Leaf Land.

But the bill harbors a contradiction. It would simultaneously let "American war resisters" stay in Canada, and would also allow "those who refuse mandatory military service" to stay in Canada. Currently, most "war resisters" hanging out in the Great White North are "U.S. military personnel who have refused to participate in the Iraq War on the grounds that it's illegal and immoral." (Toronto Star)

Immortality is just around the corner, right up the street, behind the Curb Your Dog sign. Or maybe it's a mere 20 years away. So says American scientist Ray Kurzweil in a Telegraph.co.uk article.

Advances under Kurzweil's "Law of Accelerating Returns" in such areas as genetic engineering and computer sciences and nanotechnologies will not only help our biological bits function longer but will make it possible to replace our vital organs. It seems that life-extending goodies like artificial pancreases and neural implants are already available.

If you're an adult and a consumer why would you ask the Mommy and Daddy surrogates of gargantuan government to protect you from yourself?

As an adult you vote for the goods and services that are right for you and against the ones that are not. You vote with your dollars, with your continued patronage, with your word-of-mouth endorsements to others.

For children, education is an issue between their parents and the instructors they choose for them. For adults, education is a matter between student and teacher.

Education is never the business of government; brainwashing is the business of government.

All tax-funded education falls under the definition of brainwashing because taxation is coercion.

Voluntary education is not brainwashing because, by definition, it doesn't involve coercion.

Contrary to the coercive public education monopoly (where are those "Trust Busters" when you need them?) banishing government from all classrooms would cause opportunities for education to explode.

It's been said by libertarians themselves that trying to get libertarians to agree on anything is like herding cats.

That pretty much sums up their position on capital punishment.

Opinions from the libertarian left, which includes anarchists or anarcho-capitalists, reject capital punishment on the basis that capital punishment is murder by government and that governments shouldn't exist in the first place.

The whole point of libertarianism is individual freedom.

The enemy of freedom is coercion. While criminals of all stripes and types use coercion to steal our freedom, the number one freedom-stealer is government.

Even the most-limited, least-interventionist, libertarian-friendliest government in history – the one created by representatives of thirteen previously subservient British colonies - required the coercion of taxes to make it go.

Former Governor Lutrin was hard to find. Having served out his single term after shepherding Idaho from the corrupt and tyrannical claws of the rulers in DC and their agents throughout the land, he had quietly retired to his ranch near Sandpoint, ID in the northern panhandle in Year One of the Free State Alliance (FSA). The Alliance had expanded to embrace the former states of Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Eastern Washington, Nevada and British Columbia joined two years later by Saskatchewan, Alberta, the Northwest Territories and the Yukon. The Alaskan Republic maintained very close ties with the FSA. Utah had gone her own way and established a Mormon theocracy. The West Coast states formed Pacifica but the Green Coalition which maintained tight control on the economy caused a brain-drain and economic collapse that splintered the coalition.

In the America of Objectivist Ayn Rand there's open immigration for those who merely look different, talk funny, and dress weird, but closed borders for criminals, terrorists and carriers of infectious diseases. Government keeps those types out. 

In the America of libertarians, government comprises maybe one percent of society. The rest is composed of sovereign individuals who reject coercion, respect property rights, and hold land in private hands, out of government's greedy grasp. 

Wanna get married? So get married already. Get any kind of married you want. Same sex, different sex, indeterminate sex. Marry early and marry often.

Get married in a church, in a chapel, in a private ceremony of your own devising. Government has no legitimate place in the marriage of free and sovereign individuals.

Libertarians believe in capitalism.

Specifically, they believe in laissez-faire capitalism, which is an unnecessary redundancy.

Capitalism simply means freedom of trade. The "laissez-faire" part is a French phrase that means "leave alone," which in this context means government leaving people alone to trade with one another, thus duplicating the word "freedom" in the phrase "freedom of trade."