L I B E R T A R I A N I S M

Personally, I am of the opinion that he made the basic mistake of generalisation, in that his suggestion, that codes of behaviour, whether religious or legal, were counter to the will of the individual, assumed that society was made up of like individuals. This we know not to be so.

In fact, this is precisely the mistake I made myself some years ago... and the mistake still being made by modern libertarians.

Libertarians, I have found, tend to have two distinctive features: They are generally very bright, and they usually are extremely independent-minded. This combination results in persons who look around them, deduce principles for good living, and hold themselves to those principles without recourse to external constraints such as religion.

The problem is that they have a bad habit of then making an unwarranted assumption: "If I can live like this, so can everyone else."

As you say... this, we know not to be so. For many people, good living is not solely the province of the individual to decide; other members of our shared society have reasonable expectations, too. It's not enough for some persons to simply think, "I'm right." They feel a need for someone to verify their beliefs as to what constitutes good living by saying, "Yes, you're right," or for someone to set limits by saying, "No, that's not right." Some people live better with external structure.

Blake--and modern libertarians--dismiss these persons. I don't think that's a wise decision, particularly considering that they far outnumber these Rationalists. *grin* This is why my flirtation with libertarianism ended. Once I realized that reason does not hold the same power for others that it does for me--and, more vitally, that it never will and possibly even cannot--I was forced to consider new models for society-wide good living. In other words, I needed to figure out some system of government that provided the maximum amount of liberty to individuals while still retaining enough structure to guide those who prefer confirmation of right and wrong. I wanted to try and find a break-even point between individual (internal) liberty and social (external) order.

What I came up with was... the family. Specifically, whatever increases the power of a family to live well in community with other families should be supported, and whatever diminishes that ability should be fought.

Libertarians don't like this because it asserts a power higher than that of the individual... but for the reasons given above, I think such a higher power is necessary. Liberals don't like this view because they trust centralized government more than they do local families... but experiments in socialism have shown us that overcentralized power does more damage when it corrupts than more diffused power does when it corrupts.

And while this view is somewhat palatable to conservatives, it also makes them nervous... because it posits a social control scheme that may not necessarily respect traditions. If families are truly free to choose for themselves, well, who knows what they might do?

As I see it, the system that makes the most people nervous is probably the one with the best chance of working. *grin*

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