Libertarianism is defined as the freedom "to do as you choose with your own life and property, as long as you don't harm the person and property of others." - libertarianism.com
The Cato Institute defines the three core principles of Libertarian thought:
Individualism: "Only individuals make choices and are responsible for their actions. Libertarian thought emphasizes the dignity of each individual, which entails both rights and responsibility."
Individual Rights: "Because individuals are moral agents, they have a right to be secure in their life, liberty, and property."
Spontaneous Order: "The great insight of libertarian social analysis is that order in society arises spontaneously, out of the actions of thousands or millions of individuals who coordinate their actions with those of others in order to achieve their purposes."
This is in direct opposition to socialism: the eventual abolition of private property, income redistribution, and emphasis on the collective good.
"Socialists complain that capitalism necessarily leads to unfair and exploitative concentrations of wealth and power in the hands of the relative few who emerge victorious from free-market competition—people who then use their wealth and power to reinforce their dominance in society. Because such people are rich, they may choose where and how to live, and their choices in turn limit the options of the poor." - Encyclopedia Britannica
Socialism also entails arbitrarily defining what is "fair", how much wealth is "too much", who is "poor", and why the "poor" "deserve" the now-shared wealth of the "rich".
Private property and individual ownership is a cornerstone of Libertarian philosophy, which socialism seeks to destroy. The abolition of individual ownership is a way of denying individuals their "right" to life, liberty, and property. The Objectivist strain of Libertarians (which I somewhat identify with) see the institutions of State and Law as guarantors of such privileges, and not as a burden to them.
Socialism also places restrictions on how productive one may be, with whom one contracts for business decisions, and the amount of wealth one may have. Socialism rejects the concept of individualism, assuming that decisions affecting the collective are automatically and equally beneficial to all individuals.
Libertarian Socialism:
"Libertarian Socialism is a term essentially synonymous with the word "Anarchism". Anarchy, strictly meaning "without rulers", leads one to wonder what sort of system would exist in place of one without state or capitalist masters... the answer being a radically democratic society while preserving the maximal amount of individual liberty and freedom possible."
"Libertarian Socialism recognizes that the concept of "property" (specifically, the means of production, factories, land used for profit, rented space) is theft and that in a truly libertarian society, the individual would be free of exploitation caused by the concentration of all means of wealth-making into the hands of an elite minority of capitalists." - flag.blackened.net
Does it not strike you as odd that the abolition of private property and "egalitarianism" must be enforced by a central authority? The concept that "everything belongs to everyone" is utter tripe. "You can't have this, it belongs to everyone" is a denial of my individual right to utilize property for beneficial purposes. Who is going to define how activities benefit only oneself or society? How does libertarian socialism plan to eliminate the "gap between rich and poor"? It will have to be done through laws (implying more state power) or through violence, two things that libertarian socialism rejects.
And what happens after the redistribution? I am better at a lot of things than other people, so it is likely that I would be more successful than many other people if we all started from the same place. Bill Gates never completed college, yet he has made more of an impact on the world as we know it than 99% of all college graduates. Ability is what divides people, not class, race, or gender. In most cases, people are where they are because of skill, not because of some conspiracy that seeks to keep a perpetual massive lower class. In a constitutional republican society, such a thing is political suicide. I want people to be successful, but tearing down society and remaking it in the image and likeness of messianic egalitarian egoists is not the way to do it. People should be successful in their endeavors because they are proficient, not because it gets handed to them because they are better at making a fuss about "inequality" more than others.
Have you ever watched the 100-meter dash at the Olympics? Everyone starts from the same place, but inevitably someone wins. That means the winner was a better runner, and thus more deserving of praise than the others. Should those who come in last place be equally praised? Noam Chomsky acknowledges the imbalance of ability, but rationalizes rewarding the less-able by stating those who cannot proficiently perform tasks are valuable just because they can "appreciate" the work of others. Huh, I'd like to get paid for complimenting others' achievements. Noam Chomsky also sells millions of books, gives speeches and presentations, and has a cushy university job, so I don't think he has any right or even the proper perspective to complain about what is "unfair" or what worth certain things in society have. I highly doubt a white male who has lived in the utopia of New England academia for most of his life knows anything about working, failure, or difficulty. He is a linguist who has become a saint among the left for his political ideas - though I'm not quite sure how a linguist can have more credibility than a political scientist or an economist in discussing political or economic matters.
Libertarian socialism desires egalitarianism, collective responsibility, and "non-coercive" institutions, but it will have to coerce people like me through either law or raw force in order to enter a world not unlike that which Harrison Bergeron lived in. It must first suspend individual liberty and the ability of self-determination in order to erect the framework. Libertarian socialism claims to uphold self-determination, but it only does so in a more limited scope that is both arbitrarily imposed and must come about from statist institutions.
Showing posts with label rights. Show all posts
Showing posts with label rights. Show all posts
23.6.08
Barack Obama vs. The 2nd Amendment
You don't need to be a politics major to understand that just about all politicians are out of touch with their constituencies, or even reality itself, in one way or another.
For all the messianic hubbub surrounding Barack Obama, his stance on the right of law-abiding US citizens to keep and bear arms demonstrates just such an instance of his lack of foundation in reality.
Sen. Obama has spent a great deal of time doing political work in the state of Illinois. Illinois is home to Chicago, one of the most violent cities in the US. Paradoxically so, it "boasts" heavy restrictions on firearms ownership relative to most other states. If Sen. Obama is elected this November, he will make the District of Columbia his new home. Like Chicago, Washington, D.C. experiences a violent crime rate that is significantly higher than average despite severe firearms control policies. In fact, many states and cities in the US with high rates of violent crime have heavy firearms restrictions, often imposed state-wide (Illinois, California, et al.). Senator Obama does not seem to understand that passing more laws only work against people who obey them in the first place.
Take our multifarious laws against murder - the people who break such laws generally do not spend weeks agonizing over their decision to commit murder. What, then, would stop a person with criminal intent from violating a firearms law? Restricting types of firearms only affects those who go through the legal channels. There are already laws on the books prohibiting convicted felons and those adjudicated to be mentally unfit from owning firearms. Sen. Obama acts like those laws do not already exist.
His stance, like so many other politicians and policymakers in his camp, is the following:
Law prohibits A --> A is still committed --> Pass more laws prohibiting A --> A is still committed --> repeat process until our legal system looks like a Manchester, UK river circa 1870
In essence, he is hinting at criminalizing the breaking of laws that already exist. It's not the law, stupid! It's the enforcement.
I now give you the following excerpt:
"(Cho) had a semiautomatic weapon with a clip that allowed him to take 19 shots in a row,” Obama said. “I don’t know any self-respecting hunter that needs 19 rounds of anything. The only reason you have 19 rounds is potentially to do physical harm to people. You don’t shoot 19 rounds at a deer. And if you do, you shouldn’t be hunting."
Sen. Obama, YOU may not know any "self-respecting" hunters (what, you can only be "self-respecting" if you use a breechloading or bolt-action rifle with a single-shot capacity?) but who are you to determine what people "need" and what they "don't need". That is moral busybodyism at its worst, not to mention a throwback to Clinton-era nanny-statism. Besides, he fails to note the primary purpose of the firearm in US society: self-defense, whether from our own government or from other citizens who wish to do us harm. I will be much better off with a 19-round magazine (NOT a clip) than the 6 shots that a revolver will allow me in a self-defense situation. In this case, I would certainly want to do as much physical harm to my attacker as I possibly can. As they say, it is better to be judged by twelve than to be carried by six.
"You don't shoot 19 rounds at a deer."
What about 1 round each at 19 deer? If I can bag an entire year's worth of venison for my familiy and everyone else on the block without having to change mags, that just means I'm acting with maximum efficiency. I might also practice with the same rifle at the shooting range, and a larger magazine means less reloading time. Nothing about my 19 round magazine in this context involves doing "physical harm to people".
Funny he brings up the Virginia Tech shootings, a school that already had a total ban on firearms possession by students.
Check out the statement by VT spokesman Larry Hincker, made three months prior to the rampage, in regard to the defeat of a bill that would have allowed university students in Virginia who had concealed-carry permits to utilize their right to self-defense on the campus:
http://www.roanoke.com/news/roanoke/wb/wb/xp-50658
Virginia Tech spokesman Larry Hincker was happy to hear the bill was defeated. "I'm sure the university community is appreciative of the General Assembly's actions because this will help parents, students, faculty and visitors feel safe on our campus."
The defeat of the bill only ensured that the students who were ordinarily able to carry a concealed handgun everywhere else in Virginia were disarmed and had to fend for themselves like everyone else and "wait for the cavalry to come charging over the hill" before it was too late.
Instead of pulling the 'police state' card and strip-searching every student at each entry point, perhaps Virginia would have been wise to let permitholders defend themselves and their classmates instead of forcing them to cower behind desks and pray they weren't going to die before police arrived. Instead, most of the victims were cleanly executed with shots to the head, signifying that Cho was not doing the ol' "spray and pray" - firing indiscriminately. He had the time to make clean kills. The Virginia legislature and the university faculty disarmed people who had already proven themselves to be law-abiding (look up the requirements for getting a concealed-carry permit if you don't want to take my word for it) outside of the campus and instead forced the student body to rely solely on the police. Their short-sightedness and disrespect for those who follow laws got 32 innocent people killed.
What if someone was able to fire back? Two people? Five people? If that had happened, 3 or 4 people might've died, maybe none at all. There wouldn't have been 32 families grieving, and trolls all across the Series Of Tubes We Know As The Internets wouldn't be posting about "beating Cho's high score".
It's only going to get worse with Sen. Obama as President. This is a man who does not believe that people who defend themselves with lethal force may rely on the legal nature of self-defense if they used said force in a zone that prohibits firearms (which could be your own home, depending on where you live). He has promoted the "one gun per month" policy, as if criminals operate on timetables or that they have never used anything but firearms to commit murder. People who pass the background checks should be able to buy as many firearms per month as they please. Firearms owners are not criminals, but the Democratic party has a bad habit of treating them as such. To people like Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Dianne Feinstein, gun owners are just "accidents waiting to happen". What is this, the Division of Precrime? Minority Report was an awesome movie, but it is at the same time a frighteningly real concept that has been playing out in various subtle shades for a long time.
This will all come under the guise of "reasonable restrictions". What does Mr. Ivory-Tower-Ivy-League-politician-who-has-never-fired-a-gun-in-his-life know about "reasonable restrictions"? Banning .50cal rifles because they could "potentially" shoot down an airliner, despite all evidence that claims otherwise? Banning civilian ownership of automatic weapons because they could be "potentially" used in a crime, never mind that there is only one recorded instance in the past decade of a murder being committed with such a weapon? They have no problem with "reasonable restrictions" as long as those restrictions don't affect the ability of their bodyguards to carry weapons against people who might try to attack the guarded in question.
I'm sorry, but the average American citizen cannot afford to hire a security guard or pay for an expensive alarm system. Most martial arts are only useful if your opponent is in the same weight class and gender as you are. The gun is the true equalizer: between man and woman, weak and strong, wheelchair-bound and ambulatory, old and young.
To tell a woman traveling on foot in a city at night that she should carry pepper spray (assuming her attacker is working alone), shout "HELP", hope someone notices, and then hope that someone calls the police is absolutely sexist. Shouting doesn't stop a rapist quite like putting some gaping holes in his chest cavity.
If legislators really want to go after guns, they'll start with ammunition. There is already a bill in the works in the CA legislature restricting ammunition sales to licensed in-state vendors. That's right - no online orders, and a perfect opportunity for a distribution and sales monopoly. I will be paying out the ass to put ammunition in my 65-year old rifle at approximately $1.05 PER ROUND of 7.62x54R, rather than the $80 I would spend for 880 rounds from an online vendor.
Sen. Obama also upholds the D.C. gun ban despite all evidence that the crime rate has done nothing but rise since the ban was implemented. He claims to believe in the individual's right of firearms ownership as per the 2nd Amendment, but by definition must also believe that D.C. is not included in the United States for some reason. As it gets closer to November, get prepared for the BS to be layered on in thicker layers. Fundamentally, Senator Obama supports disarming people who follow laws, even when it only results in those same people being preyed upon by those who didn't follow those laws, and then clamoring for more of the laws that will again be disobeyed.
Here is my message to each of you: during some point in your life, purchase a firearm and become proficient with it. Handgun, rifle, shotgun - it doesn't matter. Familiarize yourself to the noise and the recoil. Learn how they work. Learn the difference between "clip" and "magazine", "fully automatic" and "semi-automatic", "reasonable restrictions" and "disarmament and defenselessness".
What, are you going to rely on the police for the rest of your life? Take a stand for yourself. Don't let our lawmakers decide how, when, or why you need to protect yourself. This piece is not a McCain endorsement, but I could happily endure a small military base in Iraq for the next "100 years" (he was talking about a defensive agreement with Iraq, and the hyperbole of '100 years' is apparently lost on most people) rather than risk being stripped of the ability to afford ammunition for my rifle all while a self-righteous Democratic administration ham-handedly lectures us poor, dumb bastards who cling to our guns and religion about what we really need or don't need.
For all the messianic hubbub surrounding Barack Obama, his stance on the right of law-abiding US citizens to keep and bear arms demonstrates just such an instance of his lack of foundation in reality.
Sen. Obama has spent a great deal of time doing political work in the state of Illinois. Illinois is home to Chicago, one of the most violent cities in the US. Paradoxically so, it "boasts" heavy restrictions on firearms ownership relative to most other states. If Sen. Obama is elected this November, he will make the District of Columbia his new home. Like Chicago, Washington, D.C. experiences a violent crime rate that is significantly higher than average despite severe firearms control policies. In fact, many states and cities in the US with high rates of violent crime have heavy firearms restrictions, often imposed state-wide (Illinois, California, et al.). Senator Obama does not seem to understand that passing more laws only work against people who obey them in the first place.
Take our multifarious laws against murder - the people who break such laws generally do not spend weeks agonizing over their decision to commit murder. What, then, would stop a person with criminal intent from violating a firearms law? Restricting types of firearms only affects those who go through the legal channels. There are already laws on the books prohibiting convicted felons and those adjudicated to be mentally unfit from owning firearms. Sen. Obama acts like those laws do not already exist.
His stance, like so many other politicians and policymakers in his camp, is the following:
Law prohibits A --> A is still committed --> Pass more laws prohibiting A --> A is still committed --> repeat process until our legal system looks like a Manchester, UK river circa 1870
In essence, he is hinting at criminalizing the breaking of laws that already exist. It's not the law, stupid! It's the enforcement.
I now give you the following excerpt:
"(Cho) had a semiautomatic weapon with a clip that allowed him to take 19 shots in a row,” Obama said. “I don’t know any self-respecting hunter that needs 19 rounds of anything. The only reason you have 19 rounds is potentially to do physical harm to people. You don’t shoot 19 rounds at a deer. And if you do, you shouldn’t be hunting."
Sen. Obama, YOU may not know any "self-respecting" hunters (what, you can only be "self-respecting" if you use a breechloading or bolt-action rifle with a single-shot capacity?) but who are you to determine what people "need" and what they "don't need". That is moral busybodyism at its worst, not to mention a throwback to Clinton-era nanny-statism. Besides, he fails to note the primary purpose of the firearm in US society: self-defense, whether from our own government or from other citizens who wish to do us harm. I will be much better off with a 19-round magazine (NOT a clip) than the 6 shots that a revolver will allow me in a self-defense situation. In this case, I would certainly want to do as much physical harm to my attacker as I possibly can. As they say, it is better to be judged by twelve than to be carried by six.
"You don't shoot 19 rounds at a deer."
What about 1 round each at 19 deer? If I can bag an entire year's worth of venison for my familiy and everyone else on the block without having to change mags, that just means I'm acting with maximum efficiency. I might also practice with the same rifle at the shooting range, and a larger magazine means less reloading time. Nothing about my 19 round magazine in this context involves doing "physical harm to people".
Funny he brings up the Virginia Tech shootings, a school that already had a total ban on firearms possession by students.
Check out the statement by VT spokesman Larry Hincker, made three months prior to the rampage, in regard to the defeat of a bill that would have allowed university students in Virginia who had concealed-carry permits to utilize their right to self-defense on the campus:
http://www.roanoke.com/news/roanoke/wb/wb/xp-50658
Virginia Tech spokesman Larry Hincker was happy to hear the bill was defeated. "I'm sure the university community is appreciative of the General Assembly's actions because this will help parents, students, faculty and visitors feel safe on our campus."
The defeat of the bill only ensured that the students who were ordinarily able to carry a concealed handgun everywhere else in Virginia were disarmed and had to fend for themselves like everyone else and "wait for the cavalry to come charging over the hill" before it was too late.
Instead of pulling the 'police state' card and strip-searching every student at each entry point, perhaps Virginia would have been wise to let permitholders defend themselves and their classmates instead of forcing them to cower behind desks and pray they weren't going to die before police arrived. Instead, most of the victims were cleanly executed with shots to the head, signifying that Cho was not doing the ol' "spray and pray" - firing indiscriminately. He had the time to make clean kills. The Virginia legislature and the university faculty disarmed people who had already proven themselves to be law-abiding (look up the requirements for getting a concealed-carry permit if you don't want to take my word for it) outside of the campus and instead forced the student body to rely solely on the police. Their short-sightedness and disrespect for those who follow laws got 32 innocent people killed.
What if someone was able to fire back? Two people? Five people? If that had happened, 3 or 4 people might've died, maybe none at all. There wouldn't have been 32 families grieving, and trolls all across the Series Of Tubes We Know As The Internets wouldn't be posting about "beating Cho's high score".
It's only going to get worse with Sen. Obama as President. This is a man who does not believe that people who defend themselves with lethal force may rely on the legal nature of self-defense if they used said force in a zone that prohibits firearms (which could be your own home, depending on where you live). He has promoted the "one gun per month" policy, as if criminals operate on timetables or that they have never used anything but firearms to commit murder. People who pass the background checks should be able to buy as many firearms per month as they please. Firearms owners are not criminals, but the Democratic party has a bad habit of treating them as such. To people like Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Dianne Feinstein, gun owners are just "accidents waiting to happen". What is this, the Division of Precrime? Minority Report was an awesome movie, but it is at the same time a frighteningly real concept that has been playing out in various subtle shades for a long time.
This will all come under the guise of "reasonable restrictions". What does Mr. Ivory-Tower-Ivy-League-politician-who-has-never-fired-a-gun-in-his-life know about "reasonable restrictions"? Banning .50cal rifles because they could "potentially" shoot down an airliner, despite all evidence that claims otherwise? Banning civilian ownership of automatic weapons because they could be "potentially" used in a crime, never mind that there is only one recorded instance in the past decade of a murder being committed with such a weapon? They have no problem with "reasonable restrictions" as long as those restrictions don't affect the ability of their bodyguards to carry weapons against people who might try to attack the guarded in question.
I'm sorry, but the average American citizen cannot afford to hire a security guard or pay for an expensive alarm system. Most martial arts are only useful if your opponent is in the same weight class and gender as you are. The gun is the true equalizer: between man and woman, weak and strong, wheelchair-bound and ambulatory, old and young.
To tell a woman traveling on foot in a city at night that she should carry pepper spray (assuming her attacker is working alone), shout "HELP", hope someone notices, and then hope that someone calls the police is absolutely sexist. Shouting doesn't stop a rapist quite like putting some gaping holes in his chest cavity.
If legislators really want to go after guns, they'll start with ammunition. There is already a bill in the works in the CA legislature restricting ammunition sales to licensed in-state vendors. That's right - no online orders, and a perfect opportunity for a distribution and sales monopoly. I will be paying out the ass to put ammunition in my 65-year old rifle at approximately $1.05 PER ROUND of 7.62x54R, rather than the $80 I would spend for 880 rounds from an online vendor.
Sen. Obama also upholds the D.C. gun ban despite all evidence that the crime rate has done nothing but rise since the ban was implemented. He claims to believe in the individual's right of firearms ownership as per the 2nd Amendment, but by definition must also believe that D.C. is not included in the United States for some reason. As it gets closer to November, get prepared for the BS to be layered on in thicker layers. Fundamentally, Senator Obama supports disarming people who follow laws, even when it only results in those same people being preyed upon by those who didn't follow those laws, and then clamoring for more of the laws that will again be disobeyed.
Here is my message to each of you: during some point in your life, purchase a firearm and become proficient with it. Handgun, rifle, shotgun - it doesn't matter. Familiarize yourself to the noise and the recoil. Learn how they work. Learn the difference between "clip" and "magazine", "fully automatic" and "semi-automatic", "reasonable restrictions" and "disarmament and defenselessness".
What, are you going to rely on the police for the rest of your life? Take a stand for yourself. Don't let our lawmakers decide how, when, or why you need to protect yourself. This piece is not a McCain endorsement, but I could happily endure a small military base in Iraq for the next "100 years" (he was talking about a defensive agreement with Iraq, and the hyperbole of '100 years' is apparently lost on most people) rather than risk being stripped of the ability to afford ammunition for my rifle all while a self-righteous Democratic administration ham-handedly lectures us poor, dumb bastards who cling to our guns and religion about what we really need or don't need.
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