[Peace-discuss] Would It Kill Us to Apologize to Iran for the Coup?

[John W.]

On Mon, Feb 9, 2009 at 12:53 AM, LAURIE SOLOMON <LAURIE at advancenet.net>wrote:

>Courage to accept what?
>
> Courage to accept pure unqualified version of libertarianism, which is in
> many respects akin to anarchism where no state is preferred to a state and a
> very limited state, if a state is necessary, is preferred to a robust
> state.  In short, by implication, a state that is just short of complete
> laissez-faire government and society where everyone is for themselves in a
> war of all against all and the fittest survives. Instead, you qualify your
> libertarianism  with the adjective qualifier "Christian" and let in the back
> door state activism in those areas that you value and prefer such as the
> protection of private property, the protection of individualism, the
> protection of an individual's right to do what they please on their own
> property with their own property as long as it is not directly harming
> others or interfering with them, the protection of individual member's life
> and limb and right to survive, and other such things.
>
Precisely.  Whenever I suggest to a libertarian that, if he truly believes
in survival of the fittest without government intervention, then I oughta be
able to just kill him and take his stuff, he always back-pedals about 90
miles an hour and talks about the military and the police as being
legitimate exercises of power by the state.

And that's the thing about libertarians.  About 98% of 'em are white, middle
class or above, have a lot of "stuff", and are very obsessed with their
"stuff".  No matter how they acquired their "stuff", they want to keep it
and get more of it.  Their TV is never big enough; their computers are never
fast enough; they never have enough toys.  They say that they're OK with
helping poor people as long as it's voluntary and not the government
"holding a gun to their head".  But they don't actually KNOW any poor
people, so they feel very safe in saying that.  When they do actually help
someone, it's someone they know personally who is generally just about as
affluent as they are, and it's only after their own needs and wants and
lusts have been thoroughly satisfied first.

However, you stop at supporting government actions that tell people that
> they only have a right to private property if they use it for the public
> good and collective welfare of the society at large rather than  for their
> own individual good and benefit, that make it a crime to accumulate wealth
> beyond what one reasonably needs to survive happily at a modest level when
> others in society are unable to meet that level of quality of life, or that
> says that an individual's rights and freedoms are only valid  if and when
> they are exercised in the public good on behalf of the common good.
>
Precisely.



> Thus, you are picking and choosing what areas you desire government to be
> active in and what areas you think they have no business in rather than
> taking the approach that, since we have no real basis for evaluating what
> actions are legitimate actions for government to be involved in, it either
> should be involved in nothing (e.g., we in effect have no government) or it
> should be proactively  involved in every aspect of collective life with
> private individual desires and needs having a lesser priority to the
> collective good (e.g., an ant –like society).
>
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