Who Are the Champions of the Common Man?

Though I am loathe to use the word because of the history of its necessity and its misuse by the intellectually insincere, 'libertarians' (I prefer individualists) are a mixed up crowd who don't quite understand the truths that they hold so close to their consciousness but, sometimes, still do not see.

Simply stated, we advocate for individual freedom and free markets. We oppose totalitarianism and all government forms that inevitably lead to it. We abhor cronyism and state sponsored monopolies (we believe true monopolies do not exist and/or cannot last without state sanction and defense). We do not believe that a bureaucratic administrative solution for planning and controlling human behavior can be authored that will result in anything less than utter disaster for all humankind.


Who Are the Champions of the Common Man?

The media’s caricature of libertarians is a pendulum that swings from one extreme to another. One minute we’re grasping plutocrats, championing the privileged, and the next minute we’re losers living in our parents’ basements.

Too many libertarians have absorbed the negative and elitist conservative worldview to the effect that our enemy today is the poor, who are robbing the rich; the blacks, who are robbing the whites; or the masses, who are robbing heroes and businessmen. In fact, it is the state that is robbing all classes, rich and poor, black and white, worker and businessman alike; it is the state that is ripping us all off; it is the state that is the common enemy of mankind. And who is the state? It is any group who manages to seize control of the state’s coercive machinery of theft and privilege.

But hasn’t the state lifted up the poor? The state’s efforts to alleviate poverty have had minuscule effects when they haven’t been counterproductive. The vast bulk of the conquest of poverty that took place in the twentieth century occurred well before the federal government had done much of anything. It occurred because the unhampered market naturally leads to an improvement in the general standard of living.

edit on 21-9-2013 by greencmp because: (no reason given)

reply to post by greencmp


What a lot of today's "liberals" tend to forget is that Libertarians continue the tradition of "Classical Liberalism."

What is Classical Liberalism?
Prior to the 20th century, classical liberalism was the dominant political philosophy in the United States. It was the political philosophy of Thomas Jefferson and the signers of the Declaration of Independence and it permeates the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Federalist Papers and many other documents produced by the people who created the American system of government. Many of the emancipationists who opposed slavery were essentially classical liberals, as were the suffragettes, who fought for equal rights for women.

Basically, classical liberalism is the belief in liberty. Even today, one of the clearest statements of this philosophy is found in Jefferson's Declaration of Independence. At that time, as is the case today, most people believed that rights came from government. People thought they only had such rights as government elected to give them. But following the British philosopher John Locke, Jefferson argued that it's the other way around. People have rights apart from government, as part of their nature. Further, people can form governments and dissolve them. The only legitimate purpose of government is to protect these rights.

There's a great temptation to try to continue enlarging the authorities and responsibilities of "the State" (the federal government) in the misguided belief that eventually it will big enough and strong enough to ensure the rights of every group against every other—while conveniently forgetting that it's the rights of the individual against the collective that ensure the rights of all....

reply to post by Ex_CT2

Indeed, rather than defend the original meaning of 'liberal', the definition was lost and replaced by 'classical liberal' (which takes too much time to explain to the uninformed and is unnecessary to the informed) and the haphazard and seemingly contrived term 'libertarian'.

“While an equality of rights under a limited government is possible and an essential condition of individual freedom, a claim for equality of material position can be met only by a government with totalitarian powers.”

-F.A. Hayek

reply to post by greencmp


Maybe Jeremiah Johnson. But like the old man told him...."A lot of people come up to the mountains to get away from all the evil down below. But the mountains has its own ways".

Logarock
reply to post by greencmp

 

Maybe Jeremiah Johnson. But like the old man told him...."A lot of people come up to the mountains to get away from all the evil down below. But the mountains has its own ways".

We all have our own personal heroes, those who we believe or ascribe to represent the ideals with which we agree.

The insidious erasure of confidence in individuals and individualism is indicative of the cultural putrescence that has taken place in our country and, indeed, across much of the globe.

Each of us has observed this and all of us are affected by it. I have a single immutable belief that carries me through these darkest of times, that truth is always in ascendancy no matter how suppressed it may appear.

"I hope that you will fare well"