Why don't Libertarians ever talk about the positives of their beliefs?

[Mensch]

It's not propaganda. It's true. Libertarianism is a shallow, selfish and morally dubious philosophy, and you are angry that the Emperor Has No CLothes. I undersatnd this bothers you, hence the emotional outburst. Libertarians hide the maliciousness of their faith in smiley faces and cleverly worded feel good phrases, but it's bad at the core.

The best example of an emotional outburst is one where the poster does everything to insult the integrity of a person’s philosophical foundation, without ever tackling specific aspects of the philosophy itself. In short, your former post was nothing more than McCarthy-style hate-mongering.

We have disagreements. And there is nothing I would like more to do than to debate important issues. I don’t want to sling mud.

Libertarianism is ethics for Sociopaths. Rand modelled the Objectivist creed, which Libertarians today masturbate over, only less extreme, off a serial killer. Literally. It promotes greed and selfishness as virtues and strives to model a socially-darwinian political system where the weak are cast aside and the strong elite prevail according to a Gospel of Wealth.

Are there any moderators reading this????

But only because the government has the power of law to protect us from that.
Theoretically, at least.

But you still think corporations have absolute control over your life?

Instead of dismissing than critique, why don't you instead refute it?

Please reread his despicable post and tell me why it should be worth my time to respond.

I'm not agreeing with him necessarily. I'd just like to know why you think he's wrong.

Because he gave nothing substantial that I’m able to respond to, only pure hate-mongering propaganda.

Sounds like a bit of a wanker.

Another empty insult with no substantial point of response.

 

[Tashah]

Moderator's Warning:

Let's keep it civil and jettison the sophistry

 

[Mensch]

Rand modelled the Objectivist creed, which Libertarians today masturbate over, only less extreme, off a serial killer.

I believe that's a little more than sophistry. That's downright inappropriate.

 

[Helvidius]

I say morally dubious, because of their excessive valuation of individualism and egoism without serious regard for the consequences of it for anyone else. Their statements are always prefaced with "my, mine, me, I" and emphasizing their "rights" and "freedoms." They talk a lot about freedom, but the majority of their policies tend to be supported by a rich tiny elite of powerful people very vigorously. When I speak to Libertarians about the suffering their policies cause, they range from "I don't care" to "I am more important." They tend to be people who have a severely unempathetic and sterile attitude, as if it's some natural phenomenon, therefore okay.

Remember Eboneezer Scrooge? Are there no prisons? No work houses? Death will reduce the surplus population. That's the ultimate Libertarian. And he was based off of real people during the height of Libertarian thought.




Technically, I'd agree, because Rand hated the Libertarian movement for stealing her thunder and watering down her even more extreme policy to make it more palatable. So yea. But a lot of Libertarians adhere to Objectivist ethics and see her as some sort of warped Market Goddess.

There's a reason why Rand is so popular among the Libertarian Right. Her values are mostly their values. They don't realize where she got them from. If they only knew, perhaps they would rethink their "ideal man."

I understand that libertarianism is not a moral philosophy, but I want to know what is a moral philosophy. What constitutes a moral philosophy?

 

[Gardener]

More often than not, it seems that whenever I debate a Libertarian, they often talk about morality and the way things should be, based on that morality, but never talk about how their philosophy would make the world a better place.

Seems to me that most self-described libertarians I encounter tend more towards the extreme of avoiding moral reasoning rather than indulging in.

Not all do, but for so many it's more a case of just repeating whatever they read at lewrockwell dot com.

 

[Fiddytree]

Well, it is just that rhetorically, there is a significant amount of pessimism involved with libertarians reacting comparatively to the American political system and the mainstream views. Nevertheless, it is intertwined with a large amount of positive beliefs towards the ideology. Again, Freedom and Liberty are consistently used to promote the ideology as something positive. Yes, it may be used with regret as to how people perceive Freedom and Liberty today, but I do not agree that they "don't ever talk positives."

 

[Mach]

It does seem like you missed the major point, that libertarianism isn't about telling you each way their ideas make the world a a better place for them (or who?). It's about ensuring you have the freedom to decide that, and pursue that, for yourself. Whether or not how people use their freedom is better or worse, is irrelevant, and relatively impractical to attempt to define. You may hate what 99% of the population does with their newfound freedoms, and that would be OK (to libertarians).

Also, the ideas tend to be a more of [natural human culture] minus [force/fraud]. Again, you may see the negative as "minus the government intrusion into markets, minus laws restricting XYZ", but that's because the positive is actually the set of human behaviors MINUS those other things. That's a huge set, no way it's gonna fit in a soundbite or a catchy talking point. Freedom, as someone mentioned, is pretty good, but then it's abused as much as words like socialism, and "freedom to have healthcare" becomes a contradictory, yet popular, bit of sophistry (since we're on the sophistry word of the thread). So aside from things like freedom, free markets, small government, it's really hard to smash all that goodness into something that people who hate good things can be tricked into swallowing. The last sentence is not a jab at you personally.

So all these POSITIVE THINGS that so many political foot soliders spew, are primarily anti-libertarian ideas. If it's not reducing taxes or government, it's probably costing money, and if government is spending money, it's taking it from individuals by force, so it's really hard to count those as positives for many libertarians.