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There is a type of all-natural Instagram influencer who, at first glance, appears to be all about living her best, healthy life. She is an avid proponent of meditation, clean eating, yoga, and a vague form of Asian spirituality. Her approach to life and health is holistic. And her social media feeds are a whiplash of content, ranging from the benefits of gua sha and ayurvedic diets to her skepticism about the effectiveness of masks and vaccines.

Over the past year of the pandemic, the wellness space a blanket term used to describe practitioners and promoters of noninstitutionalized Western medicine, from crystal healers to yoga teachers has grown rife with politically motivated misinformation on QAnon, Covid-19, the prevalence of child trafficking, and election integrity.

Media coverage has largely centered on these New Age-type influencers as peddlers of a libertarian, anti-science ideology that refuses masks, social distancing, and vaccines. Californias yoga, wellness and spirituality community has a QAnon problem, read a recent Los Angeles Times headline. Wellness influencers are spreading QAnon conspiracies about the coronavirus, declared Mother Jones. In March, the Washington Post wrote about QAnons unexpected roots in New Age spirituality.

These articles explore a concerning facet of American life, a phenomenon researchers call conspirituality, or how conspiracy theories have found a home in spiritual circles that are skeptical of Western medicine and established institutions. The observations stop short of implying that certain practices, like yoga, are a direct pathway to radicalization. Blame is generally assigned to the wellness communities where these fringe, anti-science ideas comfortably fester. Still, while most coverage identifies the prevalence of these dangerous, unfounded beliefs accurately, there is often little context on the wellness spaces relationship with Orientalism (or the Wests tendency to romanticize, stereotype, and flatten Asian cultures) and libertarian individualism.

For decades, many health and medicinal practices have been exported from Asia to the West, including yoga, ayurveda, reiki, and aspects of traditional Chinese medicine such as cupping, gua sha, and acupuncture. Such traditions are often categorized under the alternative medicine or New Age umbrella vague terms that conflate different philosophical and medical systems into a uniquely Western mishmash of ideas. The nuance and history of these traditions, however, dont exactly get first billing when they go viral.

Cultural exports are a complex, inevitable result of globalization, and cultural appropriation doesnt always carry negative effects. As Asian-inspired practices and treatments edge toward the mainstream, the problem isnt necessarily appropriation. Its what appropriation can produce: an Orientalist perspective toward non-Western practices that can be misrepresented to further a political agenda.

The process by which this happens is likely familiar to anyone with a passing knowledge of Gwyneth Paltrows Goop, although this type of appropriation predates the brand by decades. It usually begins with an influential (usually white) Westerner who encounters a practice with origins in East or South Asia. The person integrates the tradition into their lifestyle, publicly touts its benefits, and helps disseminate a version of the practice to their own community. (Such was the case for acupuncture in 1971, after a New York Times reporter wrote about the benefits of his treatment in China.)

Its New Age capitalism at work: A robust system of knowledge is taken apart piecemeal, divorced from any philosophical or religious roots, and transfigured into a commodity, something that can be bought and sold to improve consumers lives. For example, gua sha is a traditional Chinese treatment that has recently gone viral online. It is intended to be a scraping treatment for a persons back and body, rather than the face. Yet, the beauty industry markets gua sha stones and jade rollers, another Chinese-inspired facial tool, as beautifying gimmicks a way to contour ones jawline and mimic the results of a facelift instead of contextualizing their traditional use.

Social media has, for better or worse, popularized these once-niche practices to a broader American audience. And the pandemic has facilitated this consumer interest. Stuck at home in the event of a novel disease, millions of people took to fretting over their health and well-being as the American health care system buckled. People turned to yoga, meditation, and essential oils, in addition to spiritual practices such as astrology, reiki-inspired crystal healing, and manifestation. Amid this social upheaval, some gravitated toward the alternative and sought out unorthodox theories to explain their uncertain reality.

The thing about the spiritual East or the Orient is that theres a history of Westerners cherry-picking customs, traditions, and practices to serve their needs, that they can tie to a particular political agenda, said Shreena Gandhi, an assistant professor of religion at Michigan State University who researches yoga and its history of appropriation. There are multiple aspects of Orientalism at play here. Theres the romantic approach to Eastern wellness and alternative therapies, and its hysterical counterpart, which is fearful or distrustful of traditional beliefs.

Nazi leaders, for one, were proponents of yoga and its spiritual philosophy; they were obsessed with purifying and elevating an individuals body as a microcosm of the nation-state. Modern-day wellness communities appear much more focused on the individual (without mentioning the state), but according to Matthew Remski, journalist and co-host of the Conspirituality podcast, there are lingering fascist undertones in New Age beliefs.

New-Agers are not secretly Nazis, Remski wrote in a four-part blog on yoga and conspirituality. Its more like: fascist ideas of the perfected body and earth [have] generated enduring cultural memes for holism, embodied spirituality, and health. Those memes, sanitized of their explicit politics, carry jagged edges of perfectionism and paranoia about impurity. And that double message your body is divine but it is also under attack has become standard in the commodification of yoga and wellness.

Its common for believers of conspirituality to reference South or East Asian religions and teachings. It lends to the appearance of gravitas, history, and authority, Remski told me. Its a positive Orientalism that has nothing to do with the actual practice or history involved.

In February, for example, a holistic facialist in Miami Beach made an Instagram post suggesting that wearing a mask blocks the flow of Lung Qi, borrowing language from traditional Chinese medicine on qi, or energy, that flows through the human body. This claim, while false, relies on a Western tendency to approach Eastern medicine erroneously, from a universal perspective. Its a type of medical Orientalism that exoticizes non-Western practices and caters to New Age notions of mystical, natural healing.

The onset of the coronavirus in Asia has polarized perceptions of Eastern medicine and alternative therapies, hardening a sense of scientific dualism in Asia and abroad that people, particularly its practitioners, are either pro- or anti-science. (Government officials in India, for example, have received backlash for encouraging the treatment of Covid-19 primarily with traditional medicine.) At the same time, souring US-China relations have fomented sinophobic distrust and paranoia toward Asian Americans, regardless of their citizenship status and ethnic heritage. Some believed these attitudes were fueled by Asias, specifically Chinas, initial association with the coronavirus outbreak.

It becomes political. Its easy to associate anyone who promotes or practices Chinese medicine as a mouthpiece for the Chinese Communist Party, said Michael Stanley-Baker, a historian of Chinese medicine at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. My opinion is that biomedicine and scientific research is good and authoritative. That shouldnt discredit other knowledge systems. Chinese medicine is a systematic, robust form of knowledge that isnt static. Its not anything goes, and it certainly isnt random.

The professionalization of certain fields of alternative medicine, like acupuncture and ayurveda, has standardized such practices in the West to an extent. But these treatments have plenty of skeptics, and are often dismissed as useless at best and harmful at worst. At the same time, this standardization process in the US has marginalized and even led to arrests of Asian American practitioners, argued Tyler Phan, a lecturer at the University of Pittsburgh, in his doctoral thesis on American Chinese medicine.

Meanwhile, todays wellness industry attracts a demographic of predominantly white, middle-class adherents. According to a 2017 Pew Research Center survey, roughly six in 10 American adults, regardless of their religious affiliations, believe in at least one New Age belief, such as psychics, astrology, and spiritual energy in objects.

This tendency toward the spiritual, according to Remski, is perhaps a replacement for community. He attributes it to a cultural emptiness at the heart of alternative spirituality and modern-day yoga, which coincides with the breakdown of community and health care in the US. As a result, the modern yoga studio and by extension, the greater wellness world became devoid of politics. Its siloed outlook focused on an individuals religious potential and spiritual well-being at the expense of the collective. What appears to be countercultural then becomes quite similar to libertarianism, Remski said. That spiritually libertarian attitude has permeated yoga culture through its boom cycle.

And so long as conspiracy theories persist, the redpilling will continue on Instagram, in yoga studios, and in other wellness-related spaces. Yet, according to MSUs Gandhi, there is some hysteria surrounding the stereotype of a wealthy, yoga-practicing mother who refuses to vaccinate her kids. Its not only wellness and yoga practitioners who believe in this ideology, she said. Its more than just yoga classes. QAnon is an explicitly political conspiracy rooted in white supremacy.

This hysteria, Gandhi added, is reminiscent of the attitudes that fueled the yellow peril of decades past. This sentiment isnt entirely explicit, but the fixation toward flawed, New Age-y notions of wellness often lumps together alternative, Eastern therapies and practitioners into one broad group. As a result, these practices become collectively vilified and politicized for indoctrinating vulnerable Americans.

This conflation is not only unhelpful, but also dismissive of the work and history of non-Western knowledge systems that are valuable and complex in their own right. It also makes it harder for authoritative figures to debunk false information. There should be a nuanced middle ground, Stanley-Baker argued, where various types of medicinal practices can coexist and supplement one another.

There needs to be a conversation as to what constitutes robust knowledge in Eastern and Chinese medicine, he concluded. We need to differentiate the Orientalists and the Goop wellness influencers and enthusiasts from serious and respectful practitioners.

See the rest here:
The yoga and wellness worlds have a conspiracy problem - Vox.com

Every time there are crowds of protestors in a foreign land, theres a rush of U.S. commentators hoping to spin your perceptions of the protests purpose and meaningnot so much for or against the protestorsasin favor of the U.S. commentators own political agendas.

Inlast weeks column, I mentioned the odd spectacle ofTheNew YorkTimescorrectly calling (some of)Cubas current wave of protests anti-government while Fox News (and libertarian Anthony Fisher) were uncharacteristically eager to tamp down the implications of the protests, their rough consensus being that the protestsmight be anti-communistbut were not per se anti-government, as if it makes much sense to split hairs about that in a place like communist-run Cuba.

The bland Biden administration initially appeared to endorse the view that the protests were narrow inscopeobjecting to COVID lockdowns, COVIDspread, and shortagesbut the administrationhassince, to its credit, clarified that (some of) the protests are both anti-government and anti-communism and that communismand socialism to bootare failing systems. Good for Biden.

But awave of lefty academics on Twitter was quick to assert that the real meaning of the protests (as supposedly attested by a few flags and placards in the crowds) ispro-communist(at least one big rally has been)and thatthe problem with the current Cuban regime is that it hasntheld true to the principles of the revolution. The tweeters can hope thats true, and you cant blame them for spotting the flags and slogans they prefer, but keep in mind that rebellious crowdsoften express their outrage in the language of the current regime, even ifthey dont particularly want that regimesticking around.It gives them a sort of common language and decreases their odds of getting shot.

The Tiananmen Square protests of 1989in China were a jumble of pro-democracy denunciations of the Communist Party and almost-Maoist-sounding accusations that the Party had betrayed the core precepts of Marxism and thus fallen into corruption. Accusations of hypocrisy are powerful stuff for protest purposes, even when the protestorswouldnt necessarily like consistent adherence to the principles being violated. The Tiananmen protestors abutted thoroughly Chinese calls for social democracy to the occasionalU.S.-friendlyStatue of Liberty symbol, and(to the bafflement of some leftists) there have been American flags amidst the Cuban protestors, too.

Confusion on the leftshouldntbe taken as a sweeping endorsement of the U.S. governments policies toward Cuba,either,which at the moment include a wrongheaded triple-whammy of economic blockade, patrol boats preventing refugee emigration, and the occasional very-quiet murmur in favor of military intervention (which coincidentally or not might be made easier by the toppling of the nearbygovernment of Haiti bywhat appear to be fighters trained in Colombia with U.S. aidpartlyduring Haiti-molesting Bill Clintons presidency).None of those policies are libertarian or market-friendly.

If journalism is, as they say, the first draft of history, that first draft is a mess compared to what tends to solidify in the history books years later,isnt it?For now, you can choose among major media telling you the Cuba protests are anti-government, pro-government, anti-communist, pro-communist, anti-U.S.-blockade, or a purely internal matter depending on your political preferences, especially if you steer clear of uncertainty and nuance.

Is the mainstream consensuscoincidentally or not the sort of consensus the moderatesat the U.S. intelligence agencies tend to likethat we want gentle pressure on the Cuban government, not sudden violentupheaval, and forgoodnesssake not so much upheaval that the masses everywherein the worldmight start getting revolutionary ideas?

There have been trickier analytical morasses across the world in the past decade or so,though,including theories galore about what the Arab Spring meant for the future of freedom in that region, whether the Obama administration dropped the ball by not supporting massive Iranian anti-government protests on its watch (Biden and his colleagues being eager at the time towork out an expensive arms control bribe/agreement with the regime), and whether various subsets of the broader Chinese population from Tibet to Taiwan have any hope of making common cause against Beijing. (Given how reluctant people are to make sweeping,abstract anti-Communist arguments today, we may have to make do with little empirical tidbits of what the future could hold such asthe new documentary about unrest in Hong Kong that was unexpectedly unveiled at Cannes.)

The global struggle against communismleaves us with countless tricky strategic, pragmatic questions, from whether the Color Revolutionsof Eastern Europe were authentic (and how much that matters) to whether William Shatners new talkshow on RT (formerly Russia Today),calledI Dont Understand, will make him an unwitting tool of Russian propaganda. Im inclined to think he shouldnt do the showon that channel, butthen, I think PBS should cease to exist, as a matter of anti-governmentprinciple.

The world makes so much more sense if you drop the right/left tribalism and the nationalist tribalism and adopt consistent anti-government principles:End the blockadeof Cuba. End communism. End government of all stripes, everywhere, including here, even if means saying no to some charming,flag-waving social democrat protestors.Stick to property rights, a functioning price system, and no or, if you insist, very littlegovernment.

Along the way, watch for new protest-and-rebellion opportunities. A study suggests two-thirds of Southern Republicans would like to secede from the U.S. Let them go, and encourage others from all factions to follow. Surely,weariness with lockdowns is also turning into a political-spectrum-spanning educational opportunity about the limits of the publics patience with regulation. Does anyone (who is not a pro-government fanatic) relish the thought of an immense government crackdown on, say,bootleg liquor orhomes with peeling paint on their exteriors after all that government has already put us through in the past year and a half?Itshould leave us alone now.

New talk of the U.S. requiring women to register for the draft could somehow turninto just another right vs.left moment, but it wouldmake a lot more senseif it became amoment that united the left (out of anti-militarism), the right (out of anti-feminism), the far right (out of anti-imperialism), libertarians (out of opposition to all coercion), and conventional civil libertarians against government (and particularly against the military-industrial complex).I look forward to all the usual bland intellectuals and media outlets trying to spin that one if it gets out of control, struggling to book the two sides of the issue on the usual TV shows.

Itsenough to make you hope Selective Service triesand if the surprise result is the whole world united against establishment-liberal feminists-for-the-military(Hillary hawks,if you will), so be it. The hippies of old wouldve understood. Even me admitting that and seeing those hippiesas natural allies means a wall of some kind is crumbling.Be rebel girls, notanyonesestablishment weapons.

Todd Seavey is the author ofLibertarianism for Beginnersand is on Twitter at@ToddSeavey.

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Protest and Contest - Splice Today

More than 100,000 people rallied across France on Saturday to protest President Emmanuel Macrons plans torequire a Covid-19 health pass to access public places such as cafs and cinemas starting next week. In addition to traditional concerns about curtailed civil liberties, conspiracy theories have fuelled the opposition to making proof of vaccination obligatory.

Starting July 21, a health pass (pass sanitaire) will be needed to access any of Frances leisure and cultural venues serving more than 50 people, including cinemas and museums. From the beginning of August, the pass will be required on any long-distance public transport, in shopping centres or at cafs and restaurants including on Frances famed outdoor terraces.

The pass must either include the QR code that proves someone has been fully vaccinated in France or results from a negative PCR or antigen test taken in the previous 48 hours.

Frances Covid-19 infection rate has reboundedalarmingly as the more contagious Delta variant has spread, with the average number of new cases confirmed per day soaring to nearly 11,000 from fewer than 2,000 in late June. The uptick prompted Macron to announce the health pass restrictions on July 12.

Too far

Butthe movehas provoked furious opposition among manyin France: some137 rallies took place across the country on Saturday, gathering nearly 114,000 demonstrators(including 18,000 in Paris), according to the interior ministry.

Many appeared to have taken to the streets out of alibertarianbelief that obliging people to be vaccinated if they want to accesspublic venues and activitiesis aninfringementon their basic rights.In no way does a president have the right to decide on my individual health, one Paris protester, who gave her name as Chrystelle, told Reuters.

Lucien, a young shop manager demonstrating in Paris, told AP he was by no means ananti-vaxxerbut that the state should not effectively coerce people to getinoculated.The government is going toofar, he said.

Some mainstream politicians have echoedthese arguments. Franois-Xavier Bellamy, a prominent young MEP for the conservativeLes Rpublicainsparty, and Loc Herv, vice-president of the SenatesCentristesbloc, penned a joint opinion piece in Le Figaro this week in which they laid out their reasons for opposing the measure.

Opposing the health pass does not make someone an anti-vaxxer, they wrote. The essential problem with the pass is that, for the first time in our history, people will have to present a document in order to do the most simple, ordinary things.

Extremes on both sides

But most of the political opposition to the health pass has come from extremes on both sides of the political spectrum. Macrons plans mark a backward step for personal freedoms,said leader of the far-rightNational Rally (Rassemblement Nationalor RN) party,Marine Le Pen,earlier this week. The health pass is an abuse of power,thunderedJean-Luc-Mlenchon, leader of the extreme-leftFrance Unbowed (La France Insoumiseor LFI).

LFI firebrand Franois Ruffin went further on Friday as he urged people to rally, characterisingthe health pass as a means of humiliation coming from an absolute monarchy in the form of Macrons government. Florian Philippot, Le Pens former right-hand man and leader of the right-wing populistLes Patriotesparty,declaredahead of Saturdays protests that they woulddemonstrate the power of the people in the face of a disgrace.

Various populistshave argued against the health pass on civil libertarian grounds, avoiding anti-vax statements. But many of Saturdays protesters thought differently.

Tellingly, when Philippot was addressing the Paris rally and introduced a man called Benjamin onto the stage, saying, Hegot vaccinated, but that was hischoice,there was an awkward moment of hesitation in the crowd,Le Figaro reported. It then erupted into cheers when Philippotsaid, But hes against the health pass! asBenjamin ripped up his vaccination certificate.

Embedded in the crowd, LeFigarosreporterrepeatedly overheardconspiracytheories such as that the pandemic wasorchestrated in advance and its all to make money for the laboratories. When Richard Boutry a former France Tlvisionsjournalist who now tours the country propagatingconspiracy and anti-vax ideas arrived on the scene, many demonstratorschantedhis nickname: Ricardo! Ricardo!

Were members of the Resistance; youve only just go to look at what happened under Vichy one minute different people have different rights, the next a demonstrator told Le Figaros reporter one of several comparisons he heard to the Nazi Occupation.

On Friday night, a vaccination centre in rural southeastern France was broken into and vandalised with the Cross of Lorraine (a symbol of the French Resistance) and graffiti saying Vaccination = genocide and 1940,presumably a reference to the year theVichy regime was founded.

I feel there were likely fewer avowed and strident civilian libertarians than there were conspiracists at these demonstrations, said Andrew Smith, a professor of French politics at the University of Chichester.

French anti-vaxxers likening themselves to the Resistanceconstitutes a worrying manipulation of history,he continued.

It also shows something very specifically French about the anti-vax movement in the country.That language aboutdefeat, collaboration and Nazism its a big difference from what you see in Anglo world, where Nazis are, of course, often the bad guys many people evoke but its much more abstract.

Rise of QAnon

Polling data shows thatFrench anti-vax sentimenthaswanedas thevaccinationrollout proceeded in the first half of the year. Nevertheless, anOpinionWaysurvey published in May found that 20 percent of French adults would turn down a jabwhile13 percent are undecided.

The French Academy of Medicine has said the country needs 90 percent of its adult population to be fully vaccinated toreceive herd immunity and defeatCovid-19.

The popularity ofFrenchpseudo-documentaryHold-Upshows that Covid disinformation has a big audience inthis country.Endorsing anarrayof debunked claims, the online film got more than 2.5 million views after its release in November, with several famous faces including iconic actress Sophie Marceau sharing the video.

It is in this context that the QAnon conspiracist phenomenon which weaves falsehoods about the coronavirus into a broader tapestryof fantasy, including warning of a worldwide cannibalistic cabal of paedophiles hasgrownin France over the past year, boosted byFrench-languagemisinformation websites such as DQodeurs and FranceSoir (a renowned broadsheet in the years after theWorld War II,which closed in 2012 before re-emerging two years ago as a conspiracist Internet publication).

READ MORE:'Stakes are high as QAnon conspiracy phenomenon emerges in France

A boon for Macron?

Nevertheless, conspiracy theories remain a marginal force in French society. Most people in France see that hard work and sensible policies are the route out of the pandemic, not conspiracies, Andrew Smith said.

It seems most Frenchcitizenssee Macrons plan as one such sensible policy: An Ipsos-Storia Sterna poll published on Friday showed that 60 percent of French people favour the health pass and the accompanying plan to oblige all health workersto be vaccinated.

And the pass may well prove to have beena politically expedient move for Macron ahead of the presidentialelectionnext April. When Macron made his announcement on Monday, plenty of people saw it as partly a public health measure but also a campaign message for the presidential elections, observed Paul Smith, a professor of French politics at Nottingham University.

Macrons health passcould beespecially effective at winning over moderate voters who see him charting France a path out of the Covid nightmare and see themselvesas part ofa silent majoritystanding against both the far left and the far right, said Andrew Smith:This policy changes the terrain of the battleground. The traditional right- and left-wing partiesLes Rpublicainsand theParti Socialistewill not and cannot challenge Macron on taking a measured, sensible approach to the pandemic.

You dont win the presidency through 117,000 people spread across the streets of France, Andrew Smith observed.You win through sensible, evidence-based policy to end the pandemic and restart the economy.

Original post:
Conspiracy theories fuel French opposition to Covid-19 health pass - FRANCE 24 English

The fact is, America is a country fundamentally shaped by libertarian values and attitudes. Our libertarian values helped to create the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, and those documents in turn shape our thinking about freedom and the limited powers of government. David Boaz, Who Killed Gun Control?

What is a libertarian? According to Wikipedia, libertarians wish to maximize autonomy and political freedom, emphasizing free association, freedom of choice, individualism and voluntary association. In essence, the libertarian is anyone who upholds liberty as their core guiding principle and wants to preserve their own rights as well as the rights of others.

Libertarians also want to limit state power, albeit to varying degrees. Anarcho-capitalists want only a night-watchman state, the purpose of which is limited to protecting people from aggression, enforcing private property, and a few other aspects of private life which the free market typically doesnt concern itself with. (This is not to be confused with anarchism, an ideology that usually rejects private property.) Consequentialist libertarians who believe free trade must benefit society as a whole may tolerate greater government power if it does genuine good rather than merely hinder individual autonomy.

People hearing about libertarianism for the first time might assume its some fringe ideology. You could argue that it is, but you would have to acknowledge a large reason why: Libertarians seek to take power away from the government and not give it to anyone else. Any powerful person or organization which owes their lofty position to the status quo has every incentive to marginalize libertarianism.

Summarizing a complete political and economic philosophy in a few paragraphs is a hefty task. It took Murray Rothbard (aka Mr. Libertarian) over 300 pages to do about as much when he penned For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto.

But lets set the books aside for a moment and briefly explain what libertarians believe, with the understanding that libertarians disagree on many things as well.

Libertarians believe everyone should enjoy total autonomy. Do as you please with your life. Spend it with whomever, doing whatever, wherever. Just dont forcibly interfere with anyone elses liberty and were all square.

Libertarians believe in entrepreneurialism and the free market. Innovation is wrought from passion and hard work, not duty. A government that taxes the industry is only stealing products to give to those who havent earned it. With less government control comes greater access to the free market, and more opportunity to create wealth for all.

Libertarians do not recognize official authority in most cases. The man in Washington, the man in Moscow, the man in the Vatican none of them can nullify your right to live free and independently. The libertarian rejects authoritys need to violate their rights for the greater good. To the libertarian, there is no greater good beyond the preservation of those very rights.

Why is the Libertarian Partys symbolic animal a porcupine? Because it bothers nobody and expects the same favor in return. But if you do decide to bother it, you may reasonably expect a snoot full of barbs.

No true libertarian country exists. One might argue the political ideology has a built-in kill switch, as the very people who value individualism and economic freedom seldom want to helm an organization which controls people and taxes them.

While conservatism and liberalism are espoused by Americas two dominant political parties, either of which proffers a very noisy presidential candidate every four years, libertarianism remains something of a question mark in most peoples minds.

What are the libertarian positions on the big issues? They are seldom publicly advised or officially implemented, so you have to examine them for yourself if you want greater insight into libertarian beliefs.

Democrats and Republicans both believe that a war is an awful, awful thing whenever the rival party has started one. In contrast, the libertarian is unequivocally opposed to war. At its very core libertarianism is a rejection of militarism, which by definition entails the implementation of violence to force others to do as the state wishes.

War breeds nationalism, an ideology diametrically at odds with individualism. It incentivizes corruption, as Smedley Butler elaborates in War Is a Racket, and ultimately poses a net loss to society as Ludwig von Mises explains in Nation, State, and Economy. The state at war demands its citizens to forfeit their rights and their own lives for the good of the collective. Although war invariably increases state power, its cessation almost never decreases it. And while this may go without saying, the natural rights of individuals do include not getting killed.

Libertarianism condemns war as a facet of foreign policy, yet it does not prescribe absolutist pacifism. You have every right to strike a man who is attacking you. The non-aggression principle forbids the initiation of force, not forceful defense. Likewise, many libertarians accept that war is a necessary evil in some cases. Few libertarians argue that the United States ought to have remained a British colony, and fewer still would prefer to ignore Kim Jong-un if he decided to glass San Francisco. Yet the staunchest libertarians may also advocate unwavering pacifism to the extent where war could never be an option. Whether their ideology is practicable in so hostile a world is a matter of speculation.

Most libertarians advocate for limited government not zero government as they agree some degree of official intervention is required to protect citizens from aggression, theft, and other transgressions against their private property and civil liberties.

Unfortunately, the current state of the American criminal justice system could hardly be described as limited. The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws, as Tacitus wrote, and indeed America currently has so many laws in place that most citizens would become felons if they were only formally arrested and convicted. As Hunter S. Thompson (who is not to be confused with Tacitus) once put it, In a closed society where everybodys guilty, the only crime is getting caught.

Libertarians would advocate several measures to fix the broken criminal justice system. Qualified immunity, which effectively permits government officials to violate individuals liberty, would have to go. (The Cato Institute better explains why.) So too would police unions, which make it nigh impossible to terminate terrible police officers. Libertarians also call for an immediate end to the war on drugs, as conservative libertarian Milton Friedman supported when he endorsed legalizing marijuana. (Hence why the Libertarian Party is occasionally referred to as the Dude Weed Party.)

A libertarian understands that their civil rights are not special permissions granted (or revokable) by their government. Rather, civil rights are intrinsic to humanity itself. To be born is to have the right to free speech, press, religion and so on. Certain civil rights only apply to those in special circumstances, such as the prisoners right to a speedy trial as protected by the Sixth Amendment (which is arguably violated when a criminal trial can last longer than five years).

A libertarian is soundly in favor of preserving existing civil rights as well as creating additional ones. For example, the Libertarian Party views government officials reading your emails as a very bad thing. A libertarian would also support the ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment, which would guarantee equal legal rights for all Americans regardless of their sex.

Equal rights are not to be mistaken for equal results, however. Friedrich Hayek explains how so in The Constitution of Liberty: From the fact that people are very different it follows that, if we treat them equally, the result must be inequality in their actual position, and that the only way to place them in an equal position would be to treat them differently. Equality before the law and material equality are therefore not only different but are in conflict with each other; and we can achieve either one or the other, but not both at the same time. The equality before the law which freedom requires leads to material inequality.

Gun ownership is the civil liberty which modern liberalism likes to conveniently forget. The Republican Party is friendlier to gun rights, but not nearly enough. Many GOP supporters were unhappy when President Trump instructed the ATF to treat bump stocks as machine guns, or when he said he would think about banning suppressors.

Ron Paul summed up the libertarian view on guns like so: Nobody should tell you you cant own a gun because it might be misused. And George Orwell, a socialist of all things, explained why: That rifle on the wall of the labourers cottage or working class flat is the symbol of democracy. It is our job to see that it stays there.

One of the libertarian ideas people often struggle with is this: Any political party or form of government has the potential to turn tyrannical. More than 250 million people were killed by their governments during the 20th century alone. Guns preserve political freedom by equipping people to fight back against the only organization which is legally allowed to kill them. In a country where gun confiscation has quite literally concluded with democide, it is crucial to remember that guns arent simply fun toys for rednecks.

Just like it places a premium on property rights, libertarianism maintains that you have total autonomy over your own body. You have the right to accept or refuse any medical treatment you wish to, just as you have the right to take any recreational drug that you please. (But if you get drunk and do something foolish, the consequences are all yours to enjoy.)

Libertarianism rejects the welfare state, including the governments nationalization of healthcare. As Walter E. Williams put it, There is no moral argument that justifies using the coercive powers of government to force one person to bear the expense of taking care of another. Thomas Sowell completed the libertarian argument against nationalized healthcare: It is amazing that people who think we cannot afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, and medication somehow think that we can afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, medication and a government bureaucracy to administer it.

Free-market healthcare is subject to competitive forces that continually improve medicine; government-controlled healthcare must only satisfy whichever criteria impassionate bureaucrats create for it. As is always the case, incentivizing innovation is the surest way toward progress not yoking it to government officials who are more concerned with polls than they are public health.

John Locke summed up the duty we have to children in Some Thoughts Concerning Education: Children are strangers to all we are acquainted with; and all the things they meet with, are at first unknown to them, as they once were to us: and happy are they who meet with civil people, that will comply with their ignorance, and help them to get out of it. (Not all of the libertarian movements preeminent thinkers get it quite so right. Murray Rothbards assertion that parents have no legal obligation to feed their kids can be considered frosty at best.)

The experience offered by public education suffers greatly for its dependence on tax revenue. When teachers must place the demands of government officials before the diverse needs of their students, and when the public education system indoctrinates children with whatever ideologies the dominant political party prescribes, we fail our children. Many libertarians wish to shield vulnerable children from politicians and their special interests by divorcing education from the government entirely.

You have likely noticed that we peppered this article with mentions of several people. These are the thinkers whose work you should explore if you want a firmer grasp of libertarianism. (You had better add Ayn Rand to the list while youre at it.) Keep learning, and one day soon you too may be able to bore your friends to tears with long-winded explanations as to why taxation is theft and the government should bugger off.

Follow this link:
What Is a Libertarian? A Brief Summary of Their Beliefs

Leland Jenson recently wrote a letter insulting his political opponents and spewing leftist buzzwords. He jumps all over the place trying to connect unrelated topics from completely different political camps. For example, he said, Our national democratic institutions are being undermined by Tea Party extremists (Vanilla Isis), trying to lump the Tea Party movement in with the January 6th capital riot. To understand how stupid this is, one must first understand what the Tea Party movement was.

Despite what the media would have you believe, Republicans and Libertarians dont actually get along very well. The Tea Party movement was an attempt to form a coalition between Libertarians and Republicans to focus on one single issue: government spending. The movement did manage to get a few hardline fiscal hawks elected to Congress, but it failed to give Ron Paul (now retired) the presidency.

For those who dont know, Ron Paul can be thought of as the libertarian version of Bernie Sanders. His son, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., is one of the last remaining remnants of the Tea Party. The movement that got Trump elected in 2016 was completely different and unrelated. That movement was all about national populism, not government spending.

The Tea Party movement was very short lived and it functionally died after the 2012 election. The modern Republican party today arguably does not care about the national debt and how much of the annual budget goes to simply paying interest.

Secondly, Im at a loss for words at Jenson calling the tea party vanilla isis. ISIS is a theocratic movement whose goal is to create a Sunni Islamic state. The Shia muslims were treated just as badly as non-muslims, sometimes worse; they could either convert or be killed. The Sunni muslims under ISIS control were forced to follow the strictest Islamic protocols (sharia law), such as men not shaving their beards and women being forced to cover themselves; thats putting it lightly. Failure to comply could result in barbaric thousand-year-old styles of executions such as crucifixions and stoning, including women and children.

Jenson is concerned about bigotry, misogyny and equality or whatever. When the Tea Party was active, the gay marriage debate was in full swing; the Supreme Court did not settle that discussion until 2015, long after the Tea Party ended. Libertarians are generally supportive of gay marriage, Republicans were not. The coalition required them to put their differences aside. Similarly, Libertarians are generally far less religious than Republicans; even the ones that are religious arent authoritarian about it. You wouldnt find the Tea Party pushing for prayer in schools or the Ten Commandments in front of courthouses. Comparing the Tea Party to ISIS doesnt even make sense, not even as a vanilla version. The Tea Party was less theocratic than Republicans in general at the time.

In conclusion, Jenson doesnt know what hes talking about. The Tea Party was not conservative republican extremism.

P. S. Trickle-down economics is not a real thing. The only time you hear those words are when Democrats are attacking a strawman. You wont find academic proponents of it.

William Smith lives in Fargo.

This letter does not necessarily reflect the opinion of The Forum's editorial board nor Forum ownership.

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Letter: Writer doesn't know what the Tea Party was - INFORUM