Friday, April 16, 2010

A Libertarian theorist

Q: What do you get when you cross a fundamentalist Christian with a Nazi?

A: A Libertarian

Libertarians are of course neither fundamentalist Christians (most profess atheism) nor Nazis (few wear toothbrush mustaches). But there's a similarity in spirit. The similarity to fundamentalist Christianity comes in the reliance on scripture "theory":
By theory I mean a proposition whose validity does not depend on further experience but can be established a priori. This is not to say that one can do without experience altogether in establishing a theoretical proposition. However, it is to say that even if experience is necessary, theoretical insights extend and transcend logically beyond a particular historical experience. Theoretical propositions are about necessary facts and relations and, by implication, about impossibilities. Experience may thus illustrate a theory. But historical experience can neither establish a theorem nor refute it. [emphasis original]
As to the similarity with Nazis, well...
[A] natural order is characterized by increased discrimination, segregation, spatial separation, uniculturalism (cultural homogeneity), exclusivity, and exclusion. In addition, whereas states have undermined intermediating social institutions (family households, churches, covenants, communities, and clubs) and the associated ranks and layers of authority so as to increase their own power vis-a-vis equal and isolated individuals, a natural order is distinctly un-egalitarian: "elitist," "hierarchical," "proprietarian," "patriarchical," and "authoritorian," and its stability depends essentially on the existence of a self-conscious natural – voluntarily acknowledged – aristocracy.
Seig Heil!

(And the difference between a right anarchist and a left anarchist is that a right anarchist is sincere and up-front; a left anarchist (at least one with a triple-digit IQ*) will pretend to be sad when he's enslaving or killing you.)

*It's possible that db0 is literally** a bird-brain.
**Irony:
Learn it. Use it. Make it your friend.

(via Brad DeLong)