Hello, DU. I am a libertarian.

[Ravenna44]

60. I respect your opinions

Last edited Tue Nov 18, 2014, 08:37 PM - Edit history (1)

You sound like a man who lives with integrity and believes in fairness and kindness.

The problem I have with libertarianism is: not everyone believes in fairness and kindness. In fact, the history of the world, as I read it, is rife with evidence of two overriding principles:

1) People have a dark nature. That doesn't mean that we are incapable of generosity, kindness and self-sacrifice; only that it is pretty natural for
(a) each individual to seek advantage over its fellows
(b) each tribe or clan to stick together and dislike outsiders
(c) individuals (and even more so, groups and mobs) to get a thrill out of beating up on the weak and the outsiders.

The other principle is POWER CORRUPTS. Basically meaning that if people are allowed to do the feel-good bad stuff I listed above, they will do it more and more and more.

Examples: Germans in the thirties were unhappy. Along came Hitler and said, "Blame the Jews, beat up the Jews, enslave the Jews, do whatever you want to the Jews!". Lots of people got a thrill out of following these suggestions. It's fun to run wild in the street. It feels good to have unchecked power over another.

Example: gender relations in Muslim countries. (I was married to a Muslim and studied Islam so I can write intelligently on this.). When it comes to "family law" (ie, spouses and children) Muslim countries mostly have laws similar to the beliefs of conservative Christians. The husband is head of household; the wife must obey; the husband has the right to make all the decisions and can divorce the woman at will. However - as you said in your last post - he SHOULD be kind. He SHOULD consider his wife's happiness. He SHOULD NOT criticize, shout at her or hit her, unless she is disobeying him and he has exhausted all kinder means of controlling her. But in these countries men hold all the power. Some are indeed kind to their wives. But the rate of abuse, and of women thwarted from education and career due to selfish husbands saying "no", is proven by surveys to be far higher than in the west. Men who want to let off steam by making their wives cower can do so. And the result (Power corrupts!) is that more men do so, than in countries where abuse is penalized. In Pakistan, for example, surveys put the rate of abuse at over 90 percent. We can surmise that men with unlimited power over women are frequently happy to use their power cruelly - and other men encourage rather than prevent them.

Example: the Jim Crow south before Civil Rights movement. For hundreds of years, whites happily viewed blacks as people they could own, whip, humiliate, even kill. It was a power trip - same as Kristallnacht, same as the husband who beats his wife knowing that 95 percent of his buddies are also beating their wives. It's the thrill of the mob, the clan-loyalty, the base excitement of making someone else crawl before you like you are a god. This is human nature. In the south it survived as long as it possibly could. On the day Ole Miss was integrated, good Christians like you came out in force to defend their white clan from the unwhite outsiders who dared try to enter.

In my previous post, I wanted to hear your thoughts *as a libertarian. You responded with your thoughts *as an individual.*. So tell me now *as a libertarian: if all government protections for the weak, the underdog, and the classically-discriminated-against are abolished: what does history predict will happen?

See, I don't believe that early-twentieth-century Germany birthed a particularly evil generation . Or that Muslim men are genetically more controlling and abusive than American-bred liberal Christians. Or that white southerners before the 1960's had some bizarre (but temporary!) plague of racism that people of today no longer suffer from.

I think We all wanna be Nazis and spouse-beaters and lords of creation. Call it a part of our fallen nature if you want. With restrictions (social and legal) and constant social pressure and training, most of us quell or redirect those desires. But what if the laws are revoked, and it becomes fine for whites to hang a "N's keep out!" sign on every business, in a mostly-white town where loss of minority customers has little economic impact? Or what if it becomes legal for men to humiliate or fondle female colleagues? Please Mr. Libertarian, do not imagine that a sudden magical force of economics or virtue will stem the tide of injustice that will follow.

When has it ever done so before?