[Helm]

Go far left enough, and you end up on the right. This is true for communism, but not in that if you push it left enough it will become libertarianism. Rather, it will become a rigid class system with a gigantic state machine more similar to italian fascism than anything else. There is little to no way to go from actual marxism to libertarianism. There is, however, a way to go there through anarcho-communism (I'm thinking Cropotkin and Bakunin here, not the jerk in your school with the mohawk), but I'm pretty sure most people here agree anarchism is silly enough on it's own in most of it's popular incarnations, and could only be discussed as a possibility in it's Bakunin-incarnation only after communism is achieved, so as to not credit this connection very much. It's like someone being in place B on the map, and wanting to go to place A on the map, by wanting to create an interdimensional portal to take him there or something silly like that. Meaning, the faults of libertarianism cannot be connected with communism through anarchocommunism. I understand the article doesn't deal with that directly, but this thread does, so I offer my thoughts on this too.

Furthermore, I do not understand why Kevin said that a whole fraction of political thinking is undesirable in a whole country. I agree that a lot of people over there are communists because they hate their country (whereas I was a Marxist for a long while because I loved mine, and what I define myself as today isn't much different anyway), but does this fact completely discount the possibility that communists may indeed be right about a lot of things, and that the US would benefit from the influence of a strong communist party? EDIT: If Kevin ment that the author likens the STATUS of libertarianists to the status of communists in the US, then I misunderstood him. I believe though, that the author likens them with communists in meaning "communism is bad, so if libertarianism is like communism, it must be bad too."' This is further supported by the numerous times the author goes "just like marxism tried to pull that one on us" (paraphrasing), passively suggesting that marxists had some sort of nefarious plan of world domination through smokescreening and trickery.


And a lot of you should red Zhukov with a bit less of a bias, because it's insulting you to actually call him names over what he's saying (Jeanette), or resort to ad hominem attacks (so says the communist) like Kevin.

claiming that everything that is good is so because we choose to partake of it. Therefore freedom, by giving us choice, supposedly embraces all other goods. But this violates common sense by denying that anything is good by nature, independently of whether we choose it. Nourishing foods are good for us by nature, not because we choose to eat them. Taken to its logical conclusion, the reduction of the good to the freely chosen means there are no inherently good or bad choices at all, but that a man who chose to spend his life playing tiddlywinks has lived as worthy a life as a Washington or a Churchill.

Whereas one might dissagree with this line of thinking, it is not inherently falacious. In fact, the writer of this piece has a very warped understanding of 'good', and chooses, misleadingly enough, to use it in both an ethically descriptive, and perscriptive manner, going from the simple truth that "if you want to continue living, then food is good for you" to the totally moralistically imperative (and strangely neoplatonist) "There are things that are ethically good inherently" which anyone that has even the basic understanding of ethics, understands it as what it is: a fallacy of ethical universabilty. Food is "good", where "good" means "needed", within the institution where continued existence is an end in itself, whereas 'things are inherently ethically good' really means "I believe there are things which everyone should always do, in any context" which is an ethical prescriptive statement. Either the writer doesn't understand ethics, or he chooses not to use his knowledge of them to paint his warped point.

libertarians say it should be permitted because if someone doesn’t like it, he can choose not to view it. But what he can’t do is choose not to live in a culture that has been vulgarized by it.

Tough shit. This is rediculous. This argument goes right back to censorship, and to that I only have to say that real life is the osmosis of all things that exist, permitted or not, and putting your head (or worse, your child's head) in the sand whenever something you deem 'bad' comes along does not help anyone understand real life, and build up the necessary defenses to operate in it. What it does create, is people with an infantile, invented understanding of reality, that are prone to knee-jerk carpet-bomb other countries whenever reality chooses to barge in uninvited.


I could go on point by point on much he's saying (like the 'paradoxically enough, people exercise their freedom to not be libertarianists! OMG SELF-REFERENITAL FALLACY I ARES SMART!!11) but I really can't take this article seriously on the grounds that it uses incorrect terminology extensively, seems to have a silly bias ("if I prove it's like Marxism, we all agree that it's wrong!") and generally only superficially touches specific issues. Also, it's generally ment as a debunking of libertarianism, and it doesn't really interest me to play the devil's advocate extensively. Just wanted to point out that the writer either isn't very well-read on the subjects, or that he maliciously lies about them. I am not a libertarianist, and I do realize various holes in most libertarianist systems of belief, but that doesn't mean I have to agree to the series of rediculous claims anf faulty arguments the person that wrote this piece presents as if it's great knowledge, from his invented political and moral highground.