Robert Locke on the Libertarians

Marxism of the Right

Libertarians are also naïve about the range and perversity of human desires they propose to unleash. They can imagine nothing more threatening than a bit of Sunday-afternoon sadomasochism, followed by some recreational drug use and work on Monday. They assume that if people are given freedom, they will gravitate towards essentially bourgeois lives, but this takes for granted things like the deferral of gratification that were pounded into them as children without their being free to refuse. They forget that for much of the population, preaching maximum freedom merely results in drunkenness, drugs, failure to hold a job, and pregnancy out of wedlock. Society is dependent upon inculcated self-restraint if it is not to slide into barbarism, and libertarians attack this self-restraint. Ironically, this often results in internal restraints being replaced by the external restraints of police and prison, resulting in less freedom, not more.

This contempt for self-restraint is emblematic of a deeper problem: libertarianism has a lot to say about freedom but little about learning to handle it. Freedom without judgment is dangerous at best, useless at worst. Yet libertarianism is philosophically incapable of evolving a theory of how to use freedom well because of its root dogma that all free choices are equal, which it cannot abandon except at the cost of admitting that there are other goods than freedom. Conservatives should know better.

Posted by Phil Peterson on Friday, March 18, 2005 at 05:27 PM in Libertarianism
Comments (8) | Tell a friend

Comments:

Posted by Geoff Beck on March 18, 2005, 06:39 PM | #

I particularly enjoy this essay, written by Robert Locke,

Conspiracy Theory and the National Question

Posted by Phil Peterson on March 18, 2005, 06:54 PM | #

Have you read this one?

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Printable.asp?ID=1280

Posted by Geoff Beck on March 18, 2005, 07:11 PM | #

Yes.
Big fan of Mr. Locke.

And as far as the Nazis and WWII goes, I think, the entire history of the period needs to be re-examined.

I’m afraid will have to wait 10-20 years though.

Frontpagemag used to be interesting, now it is nothing but a neo-con/israeli organ.

Posted by Jay on March 18, 2005, 07:34 PM | #

Libertarianism in a nutshell: “I don’t give a shit, and I’m not paying for shit.”

Posted by Effra on March 19, 2005, 05:19 AM | #

FrontPageMagazine.com has gone the same way as several other ‘conservative’ websites since 9/11: towards hysterical, unqualified adulation for Bush’s brand of warfare/welfare, and exclusion of all who do not share the consensus for statism and big spending at home and crusading overseas.

Lucianne.com, FreeRepublic.com and Townhall.com have all censored ‘racist’ posts and comments, e.g. support for tougher immigration laws, which an overwhelming majority of GOP voters and many Dems want. Criticism of military intervention has been denounced as ipso facto unpatriotic, despite the long and strong isolationist strain in US and especially Republican foreign policy, visible as late as Reagan.

Criticism of homosexualism and race hustling is still allowed, but not too much or too strong. Some of these ‘conservative’ operators are as starry-eyed about racial equality and ‘inclusiveness’ as any MLK Jr-adoring liberal of the 1970s.

At FrontPage, Robert Locke was writing dstinctly race-realist and paleoconnish pieces as late as 2002, but when Horowitz realised he could raise more cash in a hurry by going for full-blown Zionist particularism of the classic Culture-of-Critique type, all that went out the window, as did the ‘fray’ of unmoderated comment. FPM, like National Review in print, used to be a genuine forum for shades of conservative opinion. Now it’s a bullhorn for the Amen Corner.

Posted by Guessedworker on March 20, 2005, 01:29 PM | #

So what’s left among the paying

sites besides OQ, Amren and VDare?

Posted by JSBolton on March 21, 2005, 09:27 PM | #

Libertarians fail to distinguish between freedom from aggression, which is the actual meaning; and freedom ~for~ aggression. This is essential to their anarchistic tendencies, which would yield a civil war of competing free ranging aggressors, and permit no freedom from aggression, and thus no real freedom at all. This could explain why anarchism has traditionally been a subdivision of the left. Today, though, we have anarcholibertarians disgracing the right, by pretending to be friendly towards capitalism.

Posted by Ron Lewenberg on April 16, 2005, 07:42 PM | #

Effra,
You are utterly ignorant of the dispute between Mr. Locke and Mr. Horowitz.
It dealt primarily with Horowit’s decision to stop running a serialized commentary on Srdj Trifkovic’s “Sword of Islam”.

Why don’t you e-mail Robert and find out, and then retract your silly statement.

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