The Questionable Label of ‘Libertarian’

The Questionable Label of ‘Libertarian’

Now sure, I can see how a couple of my tweets could lead someone to think I sound “Libertarian”, as with noting that von Mises & Hayek were correct in what they had to say about many technical aspects of an economy – especially as regards inflation. But as I’d quickly replied to not only deny that I was, but also followed it up by noting that where those two strayed from the narrower technicalities of their economic fields – as with Mises philosophical trainwreck of ‘On Human Action’ – their ideas become muddled and even harmful to liberty, and that their fellow traveler, Murray Rothbard, was, IMHO, an absolute crank and an overt threat to liberty (what any criticism rests upon is what ‘liberty’ is defined as, which should involve a lot of questions, which, IMHO, libertarians too often assume, rather than ask, and are usually inadequately answered. We’ll touch on those questions down below).

At that point, if they were looking to identify what I was thinking, rather than trying to contain it, you’d think they might question the appropriateness of their labels, but nope.

Their intentions became doubly questionable for anyone who looks just a bit further into the reasons for my positions – which my xTweeter’s claimed to have done – which will reveal numerous passages from posts that I’ve blogged over the last 15 years (such as this series of posts), to the effect that:

• the futility of treating liberty as utility,
• that treating ‘choice’ as a principled decision is juvenile,
• that voting libertarian in a general election is generally unprincipled,
• that Intellectual Property is the root of all Property and Copyright Law strengthens individual rights and property rights and results in a boon to inventor and society alike (in principle, if not always in practice),

Those are just some of many problems I have with ‘Libertarianism’, and trying to label me as a Libertarian is not only something that just won’t stick, but any libertarian who bothered looking past their label’s positions, and into the reasons for them that’ve led me to not trust our Liberty with ‘Libertarians’, would leave most of them looking my way and saying ‘Nope, he’s not with us!‘.

It doesn’t take many questions to find that the answers given are too shallow to support what they claim to explain. Take the aggressively casual truism that libertarian’s state as an unquestionably self-evident presumption, that ‘taxation is theft!‘ (what’s your reaction to that statement? Hold that thought), and if you do question it, you’re typically labeled as a statist. And as that sounds a lot like an answer that’s intended to kill off our questions… let’s ask a few:

• Q: What is Theft? A: Taking what you have no permission or right to.
• Q: What is Taxation? A: The usual means of funding govt.
• Q: What defines theft, protects against it, and provides the means of punishing those who steal? A: Govt is the public’s means of defining the laws that apply to all, the means of enforcing and adjudicating them, as well as the means of defending the nation’s borders, etc.,

And so given the very real values that good government (with ‘good’ being a rare and essential qualifier) provides – without which a Free Market could not exist – it would seem that there’s at least a case to be made against the statement that taxation as such, is theft. And isn’t there a question about what label best fits those who’d seek to partake of the benefits that good govt enables, while evading or refusing to fund the means of sustaining them?

I’m not arguing for either an answer or against ‘Libertarianism’ here, but only to point out that there are questions that should be considered before asserting that the ‘science is settled!‘ on what has been labeled as the answer.

Yes, there are unjust forms of taxation (income tax comes to mind, property tax too), and yes you could easily have a govt staffed with thieves – but that problem has more to do with the form of govt, the people who formed it, and those they staffed it with, than with the means of funding what it cannot exist without. Taxes aren’t the problem, what they’re used for, is. Taxation is a means (what other means there may or may not be, is a question worth pursuing) to an end, but it’s the nature of that end, that warrants more of your attention, than does the standard means of getting there.

Those questions, and what becomes understood through pursuing them, is what will be developed as we go in this post, but what I want to point out at this point, is that whether muttered in stompy-footed exasperation, or stated as an actual position, the least important aspect of the libertarian truism that ‘taxation is theft!‘, is whether or not the statement itself is true or false. Not only does focusing on such positions minimize the very real evil that is likely to have prompted the sentiment in the first place, but by diverting our attention from the greater issues facing us, such answers effectively abort a number of questions that libertarians, and other political and economic labels and labelers, are exceedingly uncomfortable with raising.

I think that’s worth noticing.

Almost the last person of consequence to take notice and identify what those greater issues facing us are, was Calvin Coolidge, who did so up through the early 1920s. By beginning from the perspective of what the purpose of Government is – to preserve and defend the liberty of its people – he wasn’t diverted by the less consequential aspects of how government obtains its funding, and so was focused instead upon what government was doing with its citizen’s money, and why. And with that perspective in mind, it follows that the only actions that government can legitimately use its citizens tax dollars for, is to serve its central purpose, and that any other actions it takes, would necessarily be working against that purpose, and its citizens.

What that perspective also readily reveals, is that when the citizenry feel that taxation has become a burden to them, it’s most likely because their government has betrayed its purpose by doing what it should not do, which means that, as Coolidge clarified in his speech back in 1924, your government is transforming itself into an instrument of tyranny:

“…A government which lays taxes on the people not required by urgent public necessity and sound public policy is not a protector of liberty, but an instrument of tyranny. It condemns the citizen to servitude. One of the first signs of the breaking down of free government is a disregard by the taxing power of the right of the people to their own property. It makes little difference whether such a condition is brought about through the will of a dictator, through the power of a military force, or through the pressure of an organized minority. The result is the same. Unless the people can enjoy that reasonable security in the possession of their property, which is guaranteed by the Constitution, against unreasonable taxation, freedom is at an end. The common man is restrained and hampered in his ability to secure food and clothing and shelter. His wages are decreased; his hours of labor are lengthened….”

, which is a far more consequential issue than theft.

Now you tell me, when I asked you to check your reaction to the ‘taxation is theft!‘ statement above, was that the kind of issue that entered your mind… or was your attention focused on the lesser issue of theft?

See what I mean?

There are similar issues with most other political/economic labels as well, such as the other Big Two Political labels, Liberal and Conservative, beginning with the labels themselves:

• If what was actually meant by ‘Liberal’ still meant those who value individual rights/property rights, the Rule of Law, and upholding liberty for the individual within society, I’d label myself as that myself. But as those are no longer thought of or practiced as being anything fundamental to the positions that a modern ‘Liberal’ holds (advocating for ‘hate speech’ laws as our current leftists do, torpedo’s that notion), their label doesn’t even begin to identify with what I understand my positions to be. At. All. SoOooo… nope there as well.
• Similarly with ‘Conservative’ – while I very much value conserving those principles that the West in general, and America in particular, are founded upon, as the ‘Conservative’ label today embraces other positions that are antithetical to those foundational principles (*saving* Social Security, *reforming* education, *improving* the economy), leaves me as a big nope on that label too.

Yes, politics often requires us to agree on positions while differing on each other’s reasons for them. Fact. But behaving as if those various positions are in meaningful agreement, is the practice of tossing a Ptolemaic epicycle onto the discussion, which inevitably serves to produce a slew of question killing answers.

Whether or not anyone agrees with my thinking is not the issue here, the point is to notice that when a person’s thinking does not agree with the labels being applied to them – we should ask ourselves why those labels are being applied. And if the labeler shifts into affixing another label, based upon another position that’s been taken, while pointedly looking no further into the reasons given for those positions… that’s a case of using an ‘answer’ to abort your questions. And that problem goes far deeper than any particular label itself, and reveals much about us that most people today would rather leave unexamined.

Although I picked on Libertarians here, each of our popular political & economic labels today have their own easy and often trite answers that are on a par with ‘taxation is theft’, all of which serve to abort the far more important questions that we should all be asking, asking often, and pursuing deeply – which is what we’ll be getting into in this post.

On the bright side, if you can manage to not let their answers kill your questions, their misapplied labels will fall away of their own dead weight. The most effective way to get to that point, the Western way of getting to that point, is by reviving the underlying questions that the labeler’s easy answers most want to kill:

• What is meant by the label (Metaphysics)?
• How well does it apply (an epistemology of Causality and Logic)?
• Is it appropriate (Ethics)?

, and turn them back on the label, the labeler, and the systemic thinking that both serve.

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