I really dislike the term cyberlibertarians, since it conflates a (nearly) authority-less society with the movement. We don't call people that go 250 km/h on desert highways "highwaylibertarians". Libertarians will always do what is right, regardless of the law, provided there are no consequences (and even then, they often take the risk). Right now, that is setting up TOR for people longing for unrestricted information, in the past it was smuggling black slaves from the south to Canada.
As for the confusion between democracy and freedom: The root cause of course is that many non-libertarians pattern match and see democratic country and free speech next to each other. But when they try to "democratize" Iraq or Egypt to their horror they see that despite record turn out rates even more restrictive social policies.
This is because the majority of non-libertarians fail to fully accept that democracy only establishes common wishes as a basis for legality. This in and of itself is actually undesirable. Liberalism had a history of "natural" or "negative" rights which during the expansion of the Great Society, it abandoned.
I think you're confusing modern American liberalism with classical liberalism. Despite the word "liberal", they are pretty different. The emphasis on positive rights, like the right to healthcare, is one of the major distinctions.
Actually I'm purposely mixing them. Liberalism was never as black and white as people made it out to be. Sure John Locke had a long list of reasons why natural rights should be a modern tenant of a just society, but to the average citizen the shift from classical liberalism to contemporary liberalism was a series of steps, each of which made sense.
I understand what you're saying, but the average citizen wasn't alive for both John Locke and the Great Society. I guess I disagree with there even being a shift at all. They are quite different worldviews that unfortunately share the word "liberalism".
> Right now, that is setting up TOR for people longing for unrestricted information, in the past it was smuggling black slaves from the south to Canada.
Could you possibly be more self-serving?
For the record, some libertarians think that slaveholders should have been compensated for the "theft" of their "property" and that buying out slaveholders would have been cheaper, and therefore morally superior, to fighting the civil war. There's an ugly strain of Confederate sympathizing among some outspoken libertarians: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2013/07/10/th...
I'm honestly not sure if you are a troll or not. If not, do not start conversations with "Could you possibly be more self-serving?"
Libertarians, by definition, hold liberty to be a fundamental human right. It is incompatible to advocate for slavery.
As for buying out slaves from the South: obviously that would have been cheaper AND morally superior. When States joined the union they agreed to a constitution. When the constitution was changed to end slavery several states left the union. The unionists held onto military property that was physically located in the south. They were the aggressors in the war.
I don't sympathize with the slave holders, I find them abhorrent. But when you have bank loans tied to slave ownership, the impact of legalizing slavery should be handled rationally. The number of lives lost in the civil war could have been avoided.
Lincoln's election was the trigger to the Southern attempt to secede.
Also, I think the assertion that libertarian ideals are had much to do with participation in the Underground Railroad deserves some citation. Participants include free blacks, Native Americans, certain Christian denominations (like Quakers and Wesleyans), and other abolitionists. I don't doubt they share many values with libertarians, but more obvious motivations for each type of participant come to mind than libertarian fervor.
> Liberalism had a history of "natural" or "negative" rights which during the expansion of the Great Society, it abandoned.
No, it didn't. While certainly some liberal thinkers had a view of rights as exclusively negative, that was not a universal view within liberalism long before the Great Society, and, anyhow, the acceptance of the idea of some positive rights (which isn't necessary to support of Great Society programs -- belief that government should provide things in a particular set of circumstances doesn't require viewing them as rights) does not require abandoning any belief in the existence of specified negative rights.
>belief that government should provide things in a particular set of circumstances doesn't require viewing them as rights
Except that for the government to provide things to people, it has to take them from other people, which conflicts with negative rights. You pretty much need to believe in positive rights to justify violating negative rights.
> Except that for the government to provide things to people, it has to take them from other people, which conflicts with negative rights.
No, it doesn't. It may conflict with particular concepts of negative rights, but a general right not to be taxed, for example, was never a part of the liberal consensus.
> You pretty much need to believe in positive rights to justify violating negative rights.
You seem to think that "negative rights" means a single absolute overarching negative right that the government should do nothing whatsoever effecting you. And, you know, you are entitled to view that as the proper relationship of government to the individual, but absolutely wrong to characterize that as something that was once part of liberalism that is no longer.
I can imagine sets of negative rights which allow taxation and are logically coherent, but there are none which I can imagine anyone considering useful. Can you give an example of such a set?
But I asked for usefulness, not just logical coherency. By that I meant useful in the context of your claim, which was that someone could believe in the Great Society programs without believing in positive rights. Not all logically coherent sets of beliefs are ones an actual person would hold as their only beliefs in the category.
For example, almost anyone will agree that it's bad to take a person's only food away. The (negative) right not to have one's property infringed on exists in the mind of any reasonable person, and they consider it to apply to that case, at least. Perhaps that right is overridden by something in some other cases, but what would you call the overriding something if not a positive right?
I really dislike the term cyberlibertarians, since it conflates a (nearly) authority-less society with the movement. We don't call people that go 250 km/h on desert highways "highwaylibertarians". Libertarians will always do what is right, regardless of the law, provided there are no consequences (and even then, they often take the risk). Right now, that is setting up TOR for people longing for unrestricted information, in the past it was smuggling black slaves from the south to Canada.
As for the confusion between democracy and freedom: The root cause of course is that many non-libertarians pattern match and see democratic country and free speech next to each other. But when they try to "democratize" Iraq or Egypt to their horror they see that despite record turn out rates even more restrictive social policies.
This is because the majority of non-libertarians fail to fully accept that democracy only establishes common wishes as a basis for legality. This in and of itself is actually undesirable. Liberalism had a history of "natural" or "negative" rights which during the expansion of the Great Society, it abandoned.