Charles Booker @Booker4KY: Rand Paul was just busted and fined by the FEC

[Fortinbras Armstrong]

41. The late writer Iain Banks defined libertarianism as

"A simple-minded right-wing ideology ideally suited to those unable or unwilling to see past their own sociopathic self-regard."

My first objection to libertarianism is that it denies reality. After all, modern libertarianism pretends that only the state intrudes on our liberties. It ignores the role of banks, corporations and the rich in making us less free. It denies the need for the state to curb them in order to protect the freedoms of weaker people. It is the disguise adopted by those who wish to exploit without restraint. It also ignores the libertarian paradise, Somalia.

I know, libertarians will claim that Somalia has nothing to do with libertarianism, and linking the two is a sore point with them. They claim that it isn't true libertarianism, it's anarchy. True libertarians believe in just enough government to protect private property and personal safety; without those protections, they argue, anarchy ensues. The problem is that they cannot point to even one current or historical example of a government that functions as they imagine it should. They have no real world examples, so they ply their arguments as a theoretical construct.

Every example of places with little centralized government is dismissed by libertarians as an anarchistic situation, not a "true" libertarianism. It's the "no true Scotsman" fallacy, Ron Paul edition. The situation in Afghanistan is blamed on 30 years of war and tribal anarchy, rather than the lack of a proper central government. Somalia is blamed again on war, on American intervention, Russian intervention, and on tribal anarchy. Historical examples of feudalism arising in the absence of a centralized state, or dark ages arising after civilization collapses, are dismissed as either irrelevant or invalid because of war and anarchy. The fact that corruption and the Mafia are more prevalent in southern Italy where tax collection and central government are weaker than in the North, is again dismissed as a cultural or anarchistic issue. It's always the same. Libertarianism is an infallible theory of the way things should be, just as Marxism is seen by its adherents. Wherever it fails, it does so because the people weren't ready for it, or there was too much violence to allow it to work, or because the government wasn't powerful enough to protect people from harm.

Libertarians fail to realize that there has never been -- and never will be -- a government that functions according to their principles because it runs entirely contrary to human nature. As any libertarian understands when it comes to authoritarians, power tends to corrupt; and absolute power corrupts absolutely. When you decentralize and remove the modern state, leaving only essentially a glorified police force in charge to protect private property and personal safety, one of two things happens: 1) The central police force turns into a right-wing military dictatorship invested in stamping out all leftist thinking, then appropriating the country's wealth for themselves and their friends (for example, Chile under Pinochet) or 2) All central authority and protection break down completely as power localizes into the hands of local criminals and feudal/tribal warlords with little compunction about abusing and terrorizing the local population (feudal France, Afghanistan, Somalia, western Pakistan, etc.)

The devolution of local authority and taxation into the hands of criminal groups willing to provide a safety net in exchange for their cut of the action is the inevitable result of the breakdown of the government-backed safety net. People want a safety net; they'll either get it from an accountable governmental authority, or from a non-governmental authority of shadowy legality. Both kinds of authority will levy their own form of taxation, be it legal and official, or part of a protection scheme. In its own way, the "No True Libertarianism" argument is very similar to the "No True Communism" of the far left, who argue that the fault of Communism lies not with the idea, but with the practice -- despite the fact that no successful large-scale Communism has ever been implemented in the world. Neither ideology can fail its adherents. They can only be failed by imperfect practitioners. Both ideologies run counter to human nature for the same reason: power abhors a vacuum. The people with the money and guns will always abuse the people who don't have the money and guns, unless there are multiple levels of checks, balances, and legal and economic protections to ensure the existence of a middle-class with a stake in maintaining a stable society. The modern state didn't arise by accident or conspiracy; it evolved as a means of avoiding the failures of other models. Libertarianism is a philosophical game played by those without real-world experience of localized, non-state-actor tyranny, or enough awareness of history to understand the immaturity of their political worldview. It is based, like Marxism, on fantasy and rejection of the real world.