The Questionable Label of 'Libertarian'
The Questionable Label of 'Libertarian'
(Van Week Part 2)
Now sure, I can see how a couple of my tweets could lead someone to think I sound "Libertarian", as with noting that von Mises & Hayek were correct in what they had to say about many technical aspects of an economy - especially as regards inflation. But as I'd quickly replied to not only deny that I was, but also followed it up by noting that where those two strayed from the narrower technicalities of their economic fields - as with Mises philosophical train wreck of 'On Human Action' - their ideas become muddled and even harmful to liberty, and that their fellow traveler, Murray Rothbard, was, IMHO, an absolute crank and an overt threat to liberty (what any criticism rests upon is what 'liberty' is defined as, which should involve a lot of questions, which, IMHO, libertarians too often assume, rather than ask, and are usually inadequately answered. We'll touch on those questions down below).
At that point, if they were looking to identify what I was thinking, rather than trying to contain it, you'd think they might question the appropriateness of their labels, but nope.
Their intentions became doubly questionable for anyone who looks just a bit further into the reasons for my positions - which my xTweeter's claimed to have done - which will reveal numerous passages from posts that I've blogged over the last 15 years (such as this series of posts), to the effect that:
the futility of treating liberty as utility,
that treating 'choice' as a principled decision is juvenile,
that voting libertarian in a general election is generally unprincipled,
that Intellectual Property is the root of all Property and Copyright Law strengthens individual rights and property rights and results in a boon to inventor and society alike (in principle, if not always in practice),
And then there's the aggressively casual truism that libertarian's state as an unquestionably self-evident presumption, that 'taxation is theft!', and if you do question it, you're typically labeled as a statist. And as that sounds a lot like an answer that's intended to kill off our questions... let's ask a few:
Q: What is Theft? A: Taking what you have no permission or right to.
Q: What is Taxation? A: The usual means of funding govt.
Q: What defines theft, protects against it, and provides the means of punishing those who steal? A: Govt is the public's means of defining the laws that apply to all, the means of enforcing and adjudicating them, as well as the means of defending the nation's borders, etc.,
And so given the very real values that good government (with 'good' being a rare and essential qualifier) provides - without which a Free Market could not exist - it would seem that there's at least a case to be made against the statement that taxation as such, is theft. And isn't there a question about what label best fits those who'd seek to partake of the benefits that good govt enables, while evading or refusing to fund the means of sustaining them?
I'm not arguing for either an answer or against 'Libertarianism' here, but only to point out that there are questions that should be considered before asserting that the 'science is settled!' on what has been labeled as the answer.
Yes, there are unjust forms of taxation (income tax comes to mind, property tax too), and yes you could easily have a govt staffed with thieves - but that problem has more to do with the form of govt, the people who formed it, and those they staffed it with, than with the means of funding what it cannot exist without. Taxes aren't the problem, what they're used for, is. Taxation is a means (what other means there may or may not be, is a question worth pursuing) to an end, but it's the nature of that end, that warrants more of your attention, than does the standard means of getting there.
There's more to those questions and what becomes understood through pursuing what underlies them, which will arise as we get into this post, but the truism that 'taxation is theft!' whether muttered in exasperation, or stated as a position, is too often a label that's intended to kill a number of questions that libertarians and other labels are exceedingly uncomfortable with raising. Which is another reason why trying to label me as a Libertarian is not only something that just won't stick, but any libertarian who bothered looking past their label's positions, and into the reasons for them that lead me to not trust our Liberty with 'Libertarians', would leave most of them looking my way and saying 'Nope, he's not with us!'.
The real issue here is less whether anyone agrees with my thinking, than with noticing that when a person's thinking does not agree with the labels being applied to them - why apply the labels? And if they shift into affixing another label based upon another position that's been taken, while pointedly looking no further into the reasons given for those positions... that's still using an 'answer' to abort your questions, which is a problem that goes far deeper than the label itself, and reveals much that most people today would rather leave unexamined.
Same story with the other Big Two Political labels, Liberal and Conservative.
If what was actually meant by 'Liberal' still meant those who value individual rights/property rights, the Rule of Law, and upholding liberty for the individual within society, I'd label myself as that myself. But as those are no longer thought of or practiced as being anything fundamental to the positions that a modern 'Liberal' holds (advocating for 'hate speech' laws as our current leftists do, torpedo's that notion), their label doesn't even begin to identify with what I understand my positions to be. At. All. SoOooo... nope there as well.
Similarly with 'Conservative' - while I very much value conserving those principles that the West in general, and America in particular, are founded upon, as the 'Conservative' label today embraces other positions that are antithetical to those foundational principles (*saving* Social Security, *reforming* education, *improving* the economy), leaves me as a big nope on that label too.
Politics often requires us to agree on positions while differing on each other's reasons for them, but behaving as if they are in meaningful agreement, is the practice of tossing a Ptolemaic epicycle onto the discussion, for the sake of producing a question killing answer.
If you don't let their answer kill your questions, their labels will fall away of their own dead weight. At which point it's time to revive the underlying questions that such answers most want to kill:
What is meant by the label (metaphysics)?
How well does it apply (logic & causality)?
Is it appropriate (ethics)?
, and turn them back on the label, the labeler, and the systemic thinking that both serve.
“Once happy as an ignorant rocker, marriage and fatherhood led me to become informed about what I clearly didn’t know much about: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That pursuit led me into reading original sources, from Homer forward to today, which I began blogging about on Blogodidact (Blog + Autodidact). An early member of the St. Louis Tea Party, I began speaking out against Common Core and served a year with 12 others rewriting Missouri’s curriculum framework for History, grades 6-12, which taught me that our public schooling system cannot be saved - get your kids out.”
Van writes the Blogodidact and on posts on X at @Van_Blogodidact
This is part 2 of the preview for an upcoming piece by Van. He has generously donated this content for our audience.