well, you recite the tenets and ... a handle like Galt? perhaps I may be forgiven the error.
Again, you don't have to follow everything a person says before you can admire their work. You may like expressionist art, but you don't have to be an expressionist artist in order to appreciate the work of others. And likewise, you don't have to follow everything a person says even if you're two of the same bunch. If you're a democrat and FDR was a democrat (perhaps even your hero) does that mean you support the incarceration of more than a hundred thousand Japanese-Americans because he did? Does that mean you have to be a anti-semitic racist? Do you have to own slaves or support slavery in order to admire the founding fathers? OF COURSE NOT. My "handle" is not as important as my own ideas I wish to express on this forum. That should be the basis for discussion, not some cosmetic profile.
quoteno, it isn't and no, it doesn't. it is, at best, unscientific and at worst an unqualified belief little different from religon. there is millenia upon millenia of refuting evidence. Humans are and have always been both intensely individual but even more social. this is easy to qualify. few have ever lived separate from others.
you're confusing libertarianism with isolationism.
i noted it. a fine and mostly true aphorism. but hardly encompassing of his thinking. i think you may be misunderstanding m. Smith. He was in close agreement with the Liberals of his day in insisting that the welfare of the group is what justifies the rights of the individual - remember that m. Smith's opus was The Wealth Of Nations... nations, not individuals. I have already pointed to Locke, i can point out the same sentiments in any number of "classical liberals". but all you really have to do is remember the qualifying statement that we used in separating from England: "to form a more perfect Union". "provide for the general Welfare" - not get what we can as individuals. No mention of the individual at all. and, no, i didn't come up with this all by myself.
Since society is made up of individuals, I don't see how the above distinction is anyway relevant to the basic tenets of libertarianism.
but, to get back to m. Smith. he. too, appreciated the fundamental social quality of human beings. He admired compassion and he deplored greed.
If greed is defined as naked self interest (which it is most of the time), then perhaps we may agree. If it simply refers to any self-interest (without discerning the difference between naked and rational self-interest), then I disagree. There are levels of self-interest, and for the most part we are all living our lives and pursuing our own separate interests. The concept of the rule of law is crucial in understanding this difference and why one encompasses the other.
Where some thinkers, Rand, for instance, are pretty simple in their thinking, Smith was a complicated sorta fella, You have to read carefully. It helps if you read objectively, rather than looking for what you want to find.
I think your approach is mean-spirited and condescending.
you might want to expand on this a little. pretty sounding but does not seem to have much in it.
Individuals are inherently pursuing their own separate interests. Yet there is a harmony of interests. We are all living our own lives trying to survive. But we all, as individuals, expect a degree of liberty and protection. In order to ensure this system is maintained over the long run, individuals must cooperate in order to survive and live freely. As you know, libertarians are strongly pro-trade and believe that all trade is mutually beneficial or it wouldn't take place. If that is true, then libertarians obviously believe that though citizens should be free to pursue their own separate interests, they cannot survive as isolationists. You have to trade in order to survive.
this is mere quibbling. it is its antisocial nature that makes eating children reprehensible. individual and social interest are inextricably tied. you cannot separate them.
I disagree with the first sentence. It is not the antisocial nature but the very nature alone of consuming children (and by consume, I did also imply sexually assaulting) that is reprehensible. The second sentence, I agree completely. Now, please explain how libertarians commonly separate individual and social interest. Is it by protecting one minority from the abuses of others? Is it by thwarting society's attempts to steal from one minority in order to subsidize another?
our self interest is of vital importance in that it distributes the onus of responsibility for preserving the group. that is why we evolved into such independent creatures. but what adaptation serves is the population, not the individual, which in evolutionary terms, is expendible. the benefit of improving the individual is that by doing so we better the group. try a little research on the notion of "group selection". i can recommend some sites. here is
one.
Again, I sympathize with the idea that we are only as strong as our weakest link. But my approach to strengthening the weakest link is far different from your own.
as much as you may like to discredit the notion of altruism... the fact is we practice it. it makes no sense whatsoever to say that what humans do and have always done is somehow not really human.
I only take altruism by its strictest definition, which is ultimately the sacrifice of yourself for the sake of others. We're absorbed in an altruistic society because of our Judeo-Christian background (which I fervently oppose). If life is precious, then we must not waste it for the sake of others. Shaving a decade or two off my life in order to extend the life of someone else (with absolutely no guarantee that it will improve their life) is wasteful. I strongly believe I only have one life to live, and it won't be for the sake of others.