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Dear Subscriber,
I just had to quickly put a rant together about a pet peeve of
mine: people who say they are libertarian on SOME (but not all)
issues. The good news is, it has becoming more fashionable and cool
to be libertarian, after a few zillion years of being ridiculed and
demonized for having principles.
The bad news is, a lot of statists are trying to hijack the term,
in the hopes of making themselves sound learned and principled.
When anyone says, "I'm libertarian on certain issues," he's either
demonstrating his ignorance, or intentionally lying. Libertarianism
is a philosophy, based on the non-aggression principle, which says
that it's wrong to initiate violence against someone.
To say that someone is fiscally libertarian but socially
conservative, or socially libertarian but fiscally liberal, doesn't
mean anything. Adhering to a "sometimes-aggression" principle,
which ALL statists do, doesn't make someone a libertarian. Claiming
to be a part-time libertarian is equivalent to saying, "I'm a
vegetarian, except when I eat meat," or "I'm a pacifist, except
when I beat people up."
Anyway, I just posted a short rant about this on YouTube, and
here's the link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQgA8IfhJ9M
Larken Rose
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
(P.S. By the way, I totally used to do this myself, trying to mix
the label of libertarianism with condoning a giant, coercively-
funded state military. I'm just as annoyed that I was ever stupid
enough to do that, as I am that so many others still are.)
