Every "ism" has a top priority. [View all]

[cthulu2016]

Some value to which other values bend.

My personal "ism" is based on maximizing human liberty.

Some people with that top priority see government as the greatest enemy of that goal. And historically there is an argument to be made, though not a good enough argument.

Other with that priority invented liberalism, which is, in its 1960s ACLU sort of form, kind of "big goverment personal libertarianism."

That's me. I am a traditional ACLU liberal, which is actually a rather extreme place to be.

Where modern "libertarians" go wrong is in failing to grasp that the relationship of government and liberty is a practical question. A public library does involve the government picking what you can read (no library carries everything), but if you have no money for books then some-books potentially offers more liberty than no-books. Library policy should be liberty-centric within the scope of a library... the library shouldn't be a propaganda organ of the state, etc., but letting citizens read a decent, not-too-propagandistic array of books at shared expense is not categorically enslaving.

If, however, one takes it as axiomatic that government is always and everywhere the cause of diminution of human liberty then one is defining liberty AS the absense of government. Any indigent person with a court-appointed attorney might see the differently.

If one defines liberty as no government then of course a libertarian would be opposed to government, categorically. A public library must somehow reduce human liberty because it is a governmental function.

The problem is a first-principles kind of thing... the definition of a term liberty is actually the entirety of the "ism." It's more a tautology than an ideaology... if liberty is defined as "no government" then the "ism" would be more properly named "anti-governmentism" or even "anarchism."

Personally, the federal highway system has been a great source of personal liberty in the ease with which I have moved from place to place throughout my life, fairly free from brigandage.


The current "libertarianism" is, by basing itself on a dogmatic definition of liberty as the absence of government, equivalent to saying that people are only truly free when they find Jesus and thus defining a theocracy as maximizing human freedom.



Government is intrinsically hostile to liberty to some degree. Winter is also intrinsically hostile to liberty. As is being born to poor parents, etc..


Human liberty is my idealogical touchstone. For others it may be equality, justice, a full belly for all, reducing man's effect on the environment, etc...

That doesn't mean I am against feeding the hungry or against justice. Everyone has their go-to touchstone for deciding very close calls, but only a maniac has a one-variable view of human affairs.


As to how the pro-liberty view (the root of liberalism, and the reason I continue to call myself a liberal, rather than a progressive) got appropriated by a philosophy seeking the elimination of government as a presumptive good unto itself... that is just some sad political history.