Libertarianism: A Beginner's Guide

Libertarians and conservatives are two different animals.  If you need an in-depth explanation, just try calling a libertarian a conservative on steroids or some such, and you will be treated to a full, vociferous explanation.

Conservatives want to conserve; libertarians, as the name implies, put personal liberty first.  From there, libertarianism branches out into a multitude of variants.

Lew Rockwell vs. The Kochtopus

Perceptive outsiders perceive two principle libertarian camps in America:  Lew Rockwell's and the Koch brothers.  From my own vantage point I tend to agree with that gross taxonomy.

I'm not a true libertarian, there's too much Russell Kirk conservatism in me, but I do find frequent recourse to libertarian sources in my daily combat against progressive statism.  It provides a much more coherent pro-liberty philosophy than contemporary conservatism.  I would make the same comment of modern day liberalism, but that is nothing but a core-less, twitching bundle of outraged claims on other people's stuff wrapped in logical incoherence.

Anarchy:  The Extreme End of Libertarianism

After my initial tentative forays into the land of libertarianism, I found myself gravitating towards mises.org, a most excellent Austrian School Libertarian website.  It was founded by Lew Rockwell, but I find him and his brand of libertarianism hateful and repellent. Many think it was Rockwell behind the racist Ron Paul newsletters, and brilliant Austrian economist Murray Rothbard gets mentioned often by Southern Law Poverty Center types as an abettor and racist, although I've never been able to sort that out.

I enjoy reading Rothbard's works about money and economics, and I continue to frequent Mises.org because I have found nothing racist or rabidly anti-American there.  It is a place of scholarship that is also accessible to ordinary people who do not have economics degrees.

On the other hand, I detest Rockwell's site, lewrockwell.com.  It is a cornucopia of anarchic insanity.  It is an OWS reading room where our soldiers are called criminals, and traitor Bradley Manning is a Hero.  Writers ingest and regurgitate Islamist rhetoric that essentially says our "meddling" is why they hate us., and we are treated to intellectual works that explain why our bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki makes us a criminal terror state.

I'm also turned off by Ayn Rand, a humorless, stentorian didact who knocked off God and put herself in his place.  She got the big things right:  Freedom is good, statism is bad, and people act in their own rational self-interest.  Good enough, but from there she proceeded to make a cult of it, assailing us with punctilious philosophical verbosity and interminably turgid prose seemingly designed to push the bounds of tediousness and run off all but the most stubborn.

These figures represent the extreme end of libertarianism, and I cannot abide them.  If anarcho-capitalism is so damned good, why hasn’t it worked anywhere?

F.A. Hayek is the sweet spot...

... and his ideological progeny can be found at CATO and Reason. So if you want to explore libertarianism but like me are repelled by anarchist extremists, start out by going to these two sites and reading some of the articles.  Don't be offended by their advocacy for gay marriage.  They also stand up for your church's right to not perform or recognize them.  Libertarians are not extreme conservatives, they are extreme liberty lovers in the tradition of Thomas Jefferson.

Liberals don't understand Austrian Economics, but Ludwig von Mises Institute's declared arch-enemy, Reason does a nice job setting the record straight.  So if you want to know what the Austrian School is all about, those two articles are a good place to start.  If you're still intrigued, go to mises.org and dive in.

Further Reading:
Why I am not a Conservative - Friedrich A. Hayek
Why I am not an Austrian Economist - Bryan Caplan

Angry Left Shoots itself in the Face

"When you have no coherent philosophy and are merely a oleaginous agglomeration of multifarious and clashing anger-fueled agendas, such self-defeating stupidity is the inevitable result."

I find it amusing when the left ends up shooting itself in the face or exposing one of its legion contradictions.  The latest inanity is the temper tantrum boycott of Koch Industries, which will only harm unionized workers.

As an American company, Koch Industries employs over 50,000 Americans. In total, the number of American jobs that indirectly supported Koch Industries is over 200,000. In Wisconsin, Koch Industries provides nearly 3,000 jobs directly and 11,000 jobs indirectly. More importantly, many of those jobs are good-paying union jobs. So, why all the hate?(United Steelworkers Defend the Koch Brothers)

Here are excerpts from United Steel Workers international vice president Jon Geenen defending Koch industries:

The company’s workforce is highly unionized. In fact, 80 percent of its mills are under contract with one or more labor union. It is not inaccurate to say that these are among the best-paid manufacturing jobs in America.

This presents a dilemma and a paradox. While the Koch brothers are credited with advocating an agenda and groups that are clearly hostile to labor and labor’s agenda, the brothers’ company in practice and in general has positive and productive collective bargaining relationships with its unions.

While some companies are running from investment in American jobs, The Koch brothers’ Georgia Pacific just reached agreements with its primary union in the paper industry to invest more than a half a billion dollars in capital to essentially create two state-of-the-art machines that conserve fiber and energy at two separate union mills.

His bottom line? He might as well scream out to the lefty nutballs, “What the hell are you doing!?”

The "working man" is just a talking point for the left
If you claim to be for the working man, trying to close down American manufacturing is a poor way to show it. When you have no coherent philosophy and are merely a oleaginous agglomeration of multifarious and clashing anger-fueled agendas, such self-defeating stupidity is the inevitable result.

Why the Attacks on the Koch Brothers?

Why the Attacks on the Koch Brothers?

The simple answer is, pop your head up and you’re going to get hammered. The right has been going after international billionaire megalomanic and currency crasher George Soros, so the left had to find someone on the right to do the same to.

As usual, the left's aim is cockeyed...
The Koch brothers are not on the “right.” They are pro-gay rights, anti-drug war, anti-war, anti-Patriot Act libertarians. They’ve even gone so far as to fund suspect activities like the ACLU and ballet! For more information on these patriotic Americans, go here, and here. For a particularly funny and (and true) take on the lefty attacks, go read epistemicfail’s righteous rant. It will take you less than five minutes, you’ll learn something, and you’ll split your sides laughing.

The “Anonymous” attacks on the Koch’s belies the fact that these shadowy WikiLeaks confreres of the internet are not info-anarchists, but just lefty nihilists wanting to burn it all down, man.

American Left:  Unhinged, Unbalanced, Unencumbered by Reality

The attacks on these men are not surprising. Modern-day progressivism is an incoherent, personality-based movement of various caliginous interests and agitation groups, loosely gathered, each to protect his or her own particular ideological or financial turf.

They shout “science!” and talk about free thinking, but demand we all bow down when Reverend Al Gore, International Church of Gaia, declares the earth will catch fire if we (not he) don’t all start driving electric cars and living in Gilligan’s Island huts. They demand we perform the very unscientific act of accepting their self-serving models and theories as dogma, lest they anathematize us as stupid hicks not worthy of even debating.

This is why the Koch's Threaten the Left:

Crony capitalism is much easier than competing in an open market. But it erodes our overall standard of living and stifles entrepreneurs by rewarding the politically favored rather than those who provide what consumers want. (Why Koch Industries is Speaking Out)

The Koch brothers have become the latest villain in the progressive narrative

The most effective lefty attacks are those that point out that the Koch brothers fund conservative causes. Although they are libertarian, they’ve got to plant the flag somewhere, and conservatism holds the firmest, highest ground right now. Would these critics expect libertarians to make common cause with politically correct, doctrinaire progressives who cheer the growth of the state?

Conservatives are not such a bad fit, since they share the goal of rolling back the size of the federal government. Yes, Democrats share Koch values on gay marriage, but the left’s belief in the supremacy of the state blows the whole deal. No, conservatives are a better, but not perfect fit. They want to roll back government power and restore personal liberty. And by the way, states continue to decide the gay marriage question on their own, abortion is still legal, and more and more republicans are blowing on their burned fingers, vowing to avoid touching the hot stove of foreign intervention again.

Libertarianism is an existential threat to Progressivism

Going after the Koch’s is stabbing at the heart of the anti-government beast. Modern-day conservatism is hard to defend and wholly complicit in bringing about our current fiscal calamity; libertarianism is not. It has a cachet right now borne of it’s inherent logic. It resonates with our founding principles and it is just the jolt conservatism needed to shock it back into some semblance of logical coherence and consistency.

Libertarianism has contributed greatly to the intellectual ferment on the right. Paloecons battle neocons, with moderates preaching a middle way while fiscal conservatives call for a truce on moral issues. Many religious conservatives don’t like libertarians, but it’s all in play, which is why the conservative cause is attracting interest (and votes) from those in the middle. For this reason I say the right will continue to surge, and the left will continue it embarrassing shrivel.

The Koch Brothers' Agenda is Clear--The Left's is Not

We know what the Koch brothers stand for because they state it clearly in person and through the organizations they openly fund, like CATO and Reason. The Koch’s stand for liberty and personal responsibility. For this reason they oppose an ever more overweening state that leaves the US Constitution getting smaller and smaller in the rear view mirror.

What does Soros and the left want? What are their guiding principles? What is their end-game?