a weird thing about libertarians... this does have to do with skepticism.

[NoodleBoy]

so I was talking to this libertopian friend of a friend at a party the other day, and I noticed something really, really weird.

none of the issues he was talking about had anything to do with actual policy. he kept mentioning supposed agreements and bills and orders that allowed "the government" to do whatever it wanted. he got a little upset when he told me the designation of some congressional bill that authorized the president to take complete control of basically everything and I told him that the name didn't even fit the naming convention of bills in congress.

it was weird. not one word about providing health care, or stimulating renewable energy industries, or united states debt policies, or even actual military policies. just a big word soup of things that just sounded patently ridiculous and sustained by an ignorance of what our governments actually do and how they do it.

I asked him point blank if he felt less free because he paid taxes. he thought for a second, and then he said he doesn't, and that he felt weird that he didn't. I tried to get him to tell me why he felt so weird for paying for public infrastructure that he uses every damn day without even realizing it and he wouldn't give me an answer.

it all struck me as pseudopolitical... you know, like psuedoscience, something that is dressed up in the language of an actual field but has nothing really to do with it.

[Warpy]

1. They're heads in the clouds dreamers

and their feet have totally lost contact with the earth. Instead of a god they have a muzzy headed belief in the ability of a complex human system to right itself without human input.

Other societies have herded their impractical dreamers into convents and monasteries of various types. A few have even created a pleasant mental health system to deal with them.

I'm terrified that in the future, we might again elect some of them to high office.

[dawgmom]

2. A Friend is married to a Libertarian. We call him "Theoretical Dave."

He is constantly spouting all these grand theories about how things ought to be, and how things ought to work -- none of which have a shred of practical application. He believes the free market will just naturally take care of everything, and government should only provide for defense of the nation.

"Libertopian" is a good way to describe him.

[onager]

4. I'm reading a good book about the free market right now...

The aptly-named Conspiracy of Fools by Kurt Eichenwald.

It's about Enron. If you want a book to bring out your Inner Stalin, this one will sure do it.

[Orrex]

3. If pressed for an example of a society that functioned according to these Libertarian ideals...

They'll say that there's no such thing as society, and then they'll cite pre-industrial Iceland as a prime example of a functioning mini-Libertopia. I'm not kidding.

Yes, a pre-industrial tribe system is easily applied to a multi-national, multi-ethnic framework of six billion people.


And I love that they actually do use the word "Libertopia" to describe this little paradise of theirs.

Wacky!

[Anarcho-Socialist]

5. Libertopian is an apt term

Libertarians (more specifically, right-libertarians "anarcho-capitalists") tend to look down their noses at the left-right dichotomy while believing that they stand outside it, a type of utopian exceptionalism.

It is unsurprising that self-described Libertopians subscribe to anti-global warming woo and other conspiracy theories. The lack of critical thinking your acquaintance has is common amongst these types and this is also illustrated in their love of woo, whether goldbugism or anti-science woo.

[Orrex]

7. Another cute thing about Libertarians

They love to make bold claims about what life would be like under a Libertarian minimalist government, and they feel very safe in making these claims, because there's no chance in hell that they'll ever be called upon to back them up.

[nickgutierrez]

6. I never quite thought of it that way.

Libertarians, the Ron Paul types, really do amount to political woo. They should be taken about as seriously as the UFO crowd.

[WoodrowFan]

8. and they're both here

and both the UFOists and the Paulites are on the DU. I don't mind the UFO-believers unless they go off into the "lizard people rule us" madness. But the supposed progressives that rant RW nonsense about the New World Order and the Federal Reserve and "fiat money" and the gold standard piss me off. They are so amazingly ignorant of the economic history of the US that it's like fingernails on a blackboard.

and for the record, Wilson never regretted creating the Federal Reserve system. He pushed it through Congress to limit the power of real private banks and bankers (like Morgan) to control the US economy. Hell, William Jennings Bryan backed the bill, and he was most certainly NOT pro-banker! The supposed Wilson quote about "I ruined my country" is fake, a phony quote invented by some conspiracy nut.

[trotsky]

10. Spot on, WF.

I still remember the first time I encountered gold bugs - HERE ON DU! I was literally shocked. I didn't think any liberal was uninformed enough to think that tying one's currency to any material in finite supply was an infinitely stupid thing to do.

The supposed Wilson quote about "I ruined my country" is fake, a phony quote invented by some conspiracy nut.

Wait a minute... are you telling me a paranoid conspiracy theorist MADE SOMETHING UP?!? They never do that, do they??? :crazy:

[trotsky]

14. An oopsie in the above post.

Thank you to Orrex for pointing it out. The "was" in "was an infinitely stupid thing to do" should be a wasn't. No excuses offered, just a brain fart. :)

[WoodrowFan]

15. I know, I know..

Wait a minute... are you telling me a paranoid conspiracy theorist MADE SOMETHING UP?!? I know, the mind reels at the possibility!

[Odin2005]

9. The sad thing is that Libertarian insanity is infesting the L:eft more and more.

Look at all the posters saying what a great guy Ron Paul as and go on nutty rants against central banks and fiat currency, it's moronic. I wonder if this is a result of Libertarian types bolting to the Dems because of Bush's authoritarian policies, contaminating the left-wing political comminity with libertarian conspiracy theories that spread like wildfire. HamdenRice has posted about how disturbed he is that there has been so many DUers bashing Keyensian policy proposals and instead suggesting what could only be Austrian School BS.

And don't get me started about DUers thinking the Financial Sense website is a legitimate source, it isn't, it's run by a bunch of Gold Bugs spewing BS about central banks and fiat currency.

[dawgmom]

11. There have always been a few left-wing Libertarians

Usually, however, it's less about fiscal and tax issues for them, and more about the whole legalizing marijuana thing.

[salvorhardin]

12. That used to be the definition of a Libertarian

A Republican that wants to legalize marijuana.

[LeftishBrit]

13. I get the impression that there's a lot of overlap between woo and right-libertarianism

Many right-libertarians are just right-libertarians, or 'Republicans who like to smoke pot'; but they appear to include a significant number who are truly paranoid about any form of government; and see governments as evil Nazis who want to steal their hard-earned money, take their guns, vaccinate their kids, and put fluoride in their water. The loonier among them are obsessed with the 'New World Order'. I have noticed that some of the more fervent altie-med sites are also very pro-Ron Paul.

In the UK, this sort of attitude exists in a slightly less extreme form. There are fewer absolutist right-libertarians, and the gun-obsession is not as extreme here; but the 'Daily Mail' and similar papers and their readers do often subscribe to a view that socialist government is running amok; that 'political correctness' is an evil suppression of free speech; and that that such actions as banning fox-hunting and requiring people to recycle certain forms of rubbish constitute a Nazi-style infringement of our basic human rights. (There is actually a kernel of truth in the idea that government is running amok at the moment; our Socialist-in-name-only government *is* excessively managerialist and *doesn't* respect civil liberties sufficiently. However, it is a rich irony to see them attacked for this by people who supported the 'sus' laws of the 1980s, and consider that the best solution to every problem is to 'lock 'em all up!') It is, I think, not coincidental that the Daily Mail was and is the biggest spreader of Andrew Wakefield's anti-MMR crap.