“Democracy has nothing to do with liberty,” the Libertarian Party announced on Facebook, “just as so many of the world’s greatest minds have warned.”
Huh? Just exactly which “greatest minds” are we talking about?
Not Aristotle!
The party’s statement introduced a meme quoting Hans-Hermann Hoppe, the “Austrian school economist and libertarian/anarcho-capitalist philosopher,” Professor Emeritus of Economics at UNLV and Distinguished Fellow with the Ludwig von Mises Institute. It read: “Democracy allows for A and B to band together to rip off C. This is not justice, but a moral outrage.”
Dr. Hoppe has a point, of course. The ‘will of the people’ can be just plain wrong … even, at times, malevolent. A democratic vote can lead to the tyranny of the majority and even to a tyranny of the minority, as those politicians promising to serve ‘We the People’ end up serving themselves and their cronies.
I’ve not read Professor Hoppe’s Democracy: The God That Failed, where he sort of argues for monarchy over democracy, but I offer two points: (1) no one in their right mind talks of democracy without including the protections of basic individual rights, which have become the hallmark of democratic countries across the globe, and (2) no one in the real world thinks democracy is God.
Still, we won’t trade it for monarchy.
My issue with this social media post, however, is really with the Libertarian Party’s comment that “democracy” — including the democratic means the party has purportedly been employing across the country for decades — has provided no past benefit and offers no future hope for sustaining or expanding our freedom.
So, don’t vote Libertarian this November?
I’ll take that under advisement.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
“Liberty Playing Cards with Aristotle” by DALL‑E (note that the AI has chosen to show Lady Liberty as bruised and beaten. Her torch appears to be made of tissue.-)
—
See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
2 replies on “Thoughts on Nothingness”
The track-record of the Libertarian Party has generally been bad for some time now. Examples: Andre Verne Marrou said that he’d seek Federal campaign funds. William Floyd Weld practically campaigned for Hillary Rodham Clinton. Jo Jorgensen thoughtless joined the pile on top of a woman fired for saying “All lives matter” on her personal Facebook account.. The chairman of the Manhattan Libertarian Party expressed a wish that those who chose not to get a COVID-19 injections would die, and no swift consequences followed for her nor for those who should have effected those consequences.
I quit the Party in 1981, and I’ve not voted for any of their Presidential nominees after 1988. After 2020, I wouldn’t even consider voting for them.
The Libertarian Party was recently taken over by a Republican “infiltrate and neuter” operation, the Mises PAC.
Its mission, at present, is to protect Republican candidates by ensuring that if it can’t avoid running candidates entirely, it runs such toxic candidates that “liberty-leaning Republicans” won’t even consider abandoning the GOP ballot line to vote Libertarian. And the likely outcome, at least this year, is “mission accomplished.”
Whether libertarians can retake control of the party in 2024, and if so whether its reputation will be salvageable by then, are open questions.