Finally, proof libertarians are really marxists

I've heard it said before, but never so eloquently as here.

(my interjection in [brackets])

Libertarian Support for Gay Marriage Rooted in Communist Attack on Family

We hear people say the libertarian view is to "get the government out of marriage." But where did that slogan come from? There is simply no basis for that notion in the works of classic libertarian writers.
...
If nothing in Hayek, Mises, Rothbard or Rand supports the abolition, redefinition, or privatization of marriage [she's waaaaay off base here], then where did those ideas come from? The answer is that they came from writers on the left -- most significantly, from The Communist Manifesto written by Karl Marx and published in 1848.

Click to expand...

There it is... undeniable proof that modern libertarians are really marxists.

Albedo said:

FWIW, I wasn't being entirely sarcastic when I said Atlas Shrugged can be read as anarchosyndicalist. Politics isn't so much a spectrum as a Moebius strip.


But these guys are knobs. The Soviets hated gays as much as they do.

Click to expand...

Noam Chomsky's definition of anarcho-syndicalism isn't a half-bad description of Galt's Gulch. However, there were a few people working there for wages, although most had future plans to pursue their own interests.

Noam Chomsky said:

Now a federated, decentralised system of free associations, incorporating economic as well as other social institutions, would be what I refer to as anarcho-syndicalism; and it seems to me that this is the appropriate form of social organisation for an advanced technological society in which human beings do not have to be forced into the position of tools, of cogs in the machine.

Click to expand...

Which "these guys" were you referencing?

kuwisdelu said:

We hear people say the libertarian view is to "get the government out of marriage."

Click to expand...

So that's the libertarian view...

Click to expand...

Yep. Has been for decades.

Reason Magazine, for example, first came out for gay marriage in 1975.

The marriage laws are obviously discriminatory and thereby deny to homosexual couples legal benefits granted to heterosexual marrieds—lower tax rates, immunity from being forced to testify against a spouse, etc. Probably the most blatantly homophobic institution in our society is the military and security establishment. The armed forces' refusal to allow homosexuals to join or to stay in the military reaches beyond the issue of whether homosexuals should have a chance to receive the training, pensions, and other benefits their tax dollars are paying for-veteran status and an honorable discharge affect a man's chances of getting a job, being admitted to a school, receiving preferential insurance rates, etc. [...]

In the final analysis a libertarian society will have to be a tolerant society, since not initiating force against your neighbors means that you are willing to let them live as they please no matter how alien their life style is to yours, as long as they aren't initiating force against you (if you don't like them, you don't have to deal with them). This political commitment to tolerance is the main thing that distinguishes libertarianism from conservatism[.]

Click to expand...

Care to guess how many liberals and conservatives took that stance that early? I don't have a figure, but I know that's way ahead of the pack, as this quote from a recent article highlights.

Experience also prompted Americans to reassess their objections to same-sex marriage. For a long time, it was seen as a radical fantasy. In 1996, only 27 percent of Americans supported it.

Click to expand...

Twenty-one years after Reason first spoke out, gay marriage still garnered only 27 percent of Americans' support.

Back when same-sex marriage was seen as a radical fantasy, particularly by those whose political loyalty lay with the two major political parties, Reason was making the often lonely case for legal recognition.

Click to expand...

Albedo said:

The Phyllis Schlaflys of the world.

Click to expand...

I thought so, but the gender reference threw me.

robeiae said:

*iz confuzed*

Click to expand...

Well, see, kuwi's riffing off the fact that in a thread about gay marriage, the term "the libertarian view" was used in relation to the libertarian position on gay marriage, and he thought it was clever to pretend that "the libertarian view" of gay marriage was instead a statement of "the libertarian view" on all issues, therefore being able to pretend that the only viewpoint libertarians have on any issue is the one concerning gay marriage.

That way he could pretend to be confused by his understanding that the libertarian view encompassed more than just gay marriage, while misstating my viewpoint to be that the only issue libertarians concern themselves with is gay marriage.

Then rugcat came along with the old joke about libertarians being conservatives who smoke pot and have gay friends, which has been around just about as long as the Libertarian Party, and totally ignores the libertarian stance on crony capitolism, a whole slew of other socially conservative issues, nationalism, concern over the growth of government at the loss of individual opportunity, the growing erosion of civil liberties under the guise of national security, an ever-more-powerful and less-accountable domestic police presence, centralized banking, and debt-based economics in general.

I'll note that a lot of those issues used to also be liberal issues, right up until Tuesday, January 20, 2009, and are still major concerns to a small subset of liberals, which sorta pokes massive holes in the whole "conservatives who smoke pot" meme.

Each of these riffs were almost as entertaining as Ms. Schlafly's tirade, and just as erroneous. Maybe it's something in the water that's contagious. I'll note that neither addressed the issue that the liberal position on gay marriage has tracked closely with the one expressed by Ms. Schlafly up until the very, very recent past, as opposed to that 1975 statement in Reason.

It's no wonder you're confused.

ETA: Haskins dealt with kuwi more succinctly, as is his wont.

kuwisdelu said:

It was less of a point and more of a joke.

I thought Don would correct me sooner.



You say "drag". I say "commit".

I was hoping someone would get it quicker. I was getting tired of it too.

Click to expand...

I figured it was a joke, just not a very funny one. It's the usual response when someone points out that libertarians have been far out ahead of liberals on a whole slew of civil liberty issues for decades, and how badly liberals have regressed since Tuesday, January 20, 2009. It's easier than discussing that failing of the liberal agenda.

Amadan said:

I've always thought libertarians and Marxists are very much alike. They are both devoted to marvelous theoretical models which might work beautifully in toy societies with a population of no more than a few hundred, and turn into dystopian hellholes if applied on a larger scale.

Click to expand...

...and there's the "No True Scotsman" fallacy, right on schedule.

It's striking how conservatism and liberalism are widely recognized as directions on a line, while libertarianism and marxism are dismissed as polar positions.

Critiques of both liberalism and conservatism have no problem dealing with the journey along that line, while critiques of libertarianism (by both liberals and conservatives) focus immediately on the pre-supposed ultimate destination.

Apparently it's possible to have a society that's a little more conservative, or a little more liberal, but not one that's a little more libertarian or a little more authoritarian. The power of the state is not to be questioned; only which team should hold the reins of power.