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I am an open-borders libertarian.

That is bound to trigger a substantial amount of readers, because upon reading that statement various preconceptions may arise in their minds. I am a cuck who wants to see our values be raped by foreigners; and I am a left-libertarian who naively believe in tolerance when authoritarian Muslims will never reciprocate.

Except, neither of these things are true.

On the contrary, I firmly identify myself with right-libertarian values. Murray RothbardsThe Ethics of Libertyis what I consider to be a libertarian bible of sorts, and I subscribe to Hans-Hermann Hoppes argumentation ethics in principle. I regard Western values as vastly and unquestionably superior to anything else available, and I regard Islamism and Islamic law as one of the greatest threats to human freedom.

However, I regard several other things as greater threats to human freedom than even Islamism and Islamic law. Full disclosure: I am a South African. South Africans do not have the luxury of debating the petty differences between the major parties who propose to increase taxes. In various parts of Africa, the choice is between Ultimate Marxism, Advanced Marxism, and Lite Marxism. Classical liberalism or even American liberal Keynesianism are not even on the menu. And if there was any doubt: This Marxism is the very same Marxism which was thought up, developed, and exported from Europe. Marxism is a Western ideology. And Marxism, not Islamism, is what is actively leading to South Africas imminent economic and social collapse.

Socialism and all its branches and associates, which in the United States and Europe, arecomingfrom within, is the biggest threat to the continued survival of Western civilization and Western freedom. Subtract mass immigration or refugee intakes, and this problem remains unchanged. In Europe, especially, it does not even matter who immigrants vote for: Socialism has been part of the European politicalfabric for centuries to greater and lesser extents.

Closed-borders libertarians propose to focus much time and effort on a minor itch when there is a massive, gushing wound which deserves more attention. But we oppose both! is the inevitable answer except, this is largely false. Individuals like Donald Trump, Geert Wilders, and Marine Le Pen, despite their blatantly-obvious socialist, or welfarist at least, credentials, received widespread moral, if not practical support from closed-borders libertarians. That is to say, these individuals purposefully made the gushing wound bigger in order to try and solve the itch. This, in America, while they were actively condemning Rand Paul and Gary Johnson for relatively superficial (but not unimportant) imperfections.

Do not get me wrong: I agreewholeheartedlythat refugees should not benefit in the slightest from welfare. In fact, I dont think anyone should benefit from welfare. I have in discussions proposed that instead of telling individuals fleeing for their lives to fuck off, perhaps support very strict legal barriers to them receiving welfare. But in these discussions, my opponents inevitably move on to absurd positions like They use our roads! Taxpayers not refugees paid for those roads! At this stage, it becomes astoundingly clear that there is a reasonableness deficit, for even when I point out that the absolute poor citizens of a nation also often do not contribute tax revenue to the maintenance of roads, they are still, according to closed-borders libertarians, entitled to use the roads. It is obvious from that stage onward that the concern is not about the ethical principles of private property, whereby those who do not contribute must not benefit, but rather about a primitive nativism which is wholly unrelated to libertarian theory.

All this is to say that we need to ensure that we are not talking past each other on the debate about borders. Fundamentally hopefully both open and closed-borders libertarians are on the same side, and differences are to be expected. The problem arises when malicious strawmen are erected whereby open-borders libertarians are accused of enabling communism, supporting the death of Western civilization, or, the most common strawman, that we oppose any and all kinds of vetting. Open-borders libertarians almost unanimously agree on what Austin Petersen would call the Ellis Island model of immigration: a criminal background check and a health check. What open-borders libertarians do oppose, however, is when government has the audacity as a fundamentally anti-economic institution, to tell an immigrant that their skills arent needed or some other lame reason which government has no right to rely upon.

The borders debate has led to much unnecessary tension in the libertarian movement, but has led to necessary debate. My concern is that both sides are talking past each other and, if the strawmen can be set aside, we might be able to discuss the topic with some more understanding. We do, after all, believe in the very same principles.

This post was written by Martin van Staden.

The views expressed here belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect our views and opinions.

Martin van Staden is the Editor in Chief of Being Libertarian, the Legal Researcher at the Free Market Foundation, a co-founder of the RationalStandard.com, and the Southern African Academic Programs Director at Students For Liberty. The views expressed in his articles are his own and do not represent any of the aforementioned organizations.

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The Chief's Thoughts: Cutting Through the Nonsense on Borders - Being Libertarian

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Libertarian Gary Johnson was his party's presidential candidate last fall.(Photo: Gina Ferazzi, TNS)

MADISON The Democrats were sent into the wilderness after the November elections.

The Libertarians can relate. Theyve been there since their founding in 1971.

But thats changing because of demographics, according to Nicholas Sarwark, the chairman of the national party who will be in northern Wisconsin this weekend for the state partys annual convention.

The Democrats and Republicans are just shrinking and dying, he said in an interview.

My top goal for 2018 is to have every disgruntled voter who is tired of both parties lying to themhave an option on the ballot.

Ideas that Libertarians have long embraced such as allowing same-sex marriage and legalizing marijuana now enjoy mainstream support, he said.

The partys presidential nominee, Gary Johnson, received more support than any Libertarian presidential candidate before him. That said, Johnson still took only a little more than 3% of the vote.

Its getting better, but its slow, said Sarwark, adding it may take 20 years to elect a Libertarian as president.

The Wisconsin Libertarian Party convention began Friday and runsthrough Sunday at Treehaven Education and Conference Center in Tomahawk.

Read or Share this story: https://jsonl.in/2p3nfxo

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Read more from the original source:
Wisconsin Libertarians gather in Northwoods - Stevens Point Journal

The true test of libertarianism is Professor Bryan Caplansfamous 64-question quiz. Though if you dont have time for that many questions, theres also a very simple circle test.

Now we havea new pollfor those of us that are tempted by such things. I dont know who put it together, but I was intrigued by the four-axis approach.

8values is, in essence, a political quiz that attempts to assign percentages for eight different political values.You will be presented by a statement, and then you will answer with your opinion on the statement, from Strongly Agree to Strongly Disagree, with each answer slightly affecting your scores. At the end of the quiz, your answers will be compared to the maximum possible for each value, thus giving you a percentage. In addition to matching you to the eight values, the quiz also attempts to match you to a political ideology.

But before getting to results, I feel obliged to nitpick about the methodology.

Some of the questions dont make sense. Or, to be more specific, ones answers might be radically different depending on how the question is interpreted.

For instance, statists would probably answer strongly agree to this question about education, based on the assumption that government should spend more money, regardless ofdismal results.

I wound up picking neutral because I wantuniversal school choice, which would producebetter-than-adequate education, but I also dont like the notion that people have rights that are predicated on access to other peoples money.

I also didnt like this question on foreign policy. I like peaceful relations with other nations, but in some cases peace is more likely if the United States is strong. In other words, Reagans position of peace through strength.

Last but not least, I also answered neutral to this question about surveillance. I dont want pervasive spying by government on ordinary people (money laundering laws, for instance), but I also dont object to effective monitoring with proper judicial oversight of bad people.

Anyhow, with those caveats out of the way, here are my results.

The good news is that Im in the Libertarian Capitalism category. Though Im a bit chagrined that I only got 72.4% on the wealth-equality axis. Though maybe equality in this case captures my support for the rule of law and my opposition to cronyism. In which case Im happy.

I dont have any strong reaction to my scores on the might-peace and tradition-progress axes. But Im disappointed to only have 70 percent on the liberty-authority axis.

For what its worth, my overall score was the same in this quiz as it was forthe definitive political orientation test.

See the article here:
A Poll to Check if You Believe in 'Libertarian Capitalism' - People's Pundit Daily

Thursday, April 20, 2017 10:58 p.m. CDT

Libertarian Party logo.

TOMAHAWK, WI (WSAU-WXPR) -- The Libertarian Party of Wisconsin is bringing their convention and liberty retreat this weekend to Treehaven near Tomahawk.

Founded in 1971, Libertarians run on the platform that the government should not interfere in any personal, family, or business decision.

Phillip Anderson ran in last year's U.S. Senate race and is the interim Wisconsin party Director. He believes Libertarians have positioned themselves for the future.

Anderson said, "We had a lot of people that joined the Libertarian Party. We had a lot of people who identified as Libertarians already but hadn't been engaged in politics. In particular, because of the two candidates that were offered up by Republicans and Democrats, was an opportunity to open up people's eyes to see what's wrong with government, what's wrong with the two big parties. We were able to do that relatively successfully, grow our ranks and increase our visibility."

Anderson says the party is being seen more frequently on the ballot.

"Not because the ballot access laws have changed, that's the unfortunate part, but we're getting better organized and people are more willing to have more choices on the ballot. As I was campaining for U.S. Senate, there were a lot people who identified as Republicans and Democrats but were happy to sign my petition because they felt that regardless of how they voted, they wanted more choices for everybody on the ballot."

Anderson says they will be electing new state officers and representatives this weekend for the state's Congressional districts. The convention is Friday evening through Sunday.

Read more:
Libertarian State Convention this weekend | News | WSAU - WSAU

Jacob Brittons latest attempt at political debate begins, It was onlya matter of time Indeed, I suppose it was. I cant help but feel that thefirst paragraph of Brittons latest foray into the wide world of politicaleconomy is symptomatic of the bizarre way the right behaves on collegecampuses: They seem fixated on producing disagreement and then howlwith joy and roll around in the mud when they find it (Positive Rights, NotCapitalism, Require State Violence, The Oberlin Review, April 14). Brittonhilariously echoes the meme so much for the tolerant left by accusingme of failing to live up to the lefts benign reputation for the record, Ihave no interest in treating libertarianism benignly in the public sphere.

Britton attempts to make a coherent case for a minimal state by distinguishingbetween what he calls positive and negative rights, an argumentthat is more familiar to the Western philosophical canon as IsaiahBerlins distinction between positive and negative liberty. Positive libertyis affirmative the freedom to act as opposed to negative liberty, whichis freedom from coercive forces. Britton argues that I advocate for the former,while a just state protects only the latter. In his view, negative libertycan be secured without coercive activity on the part of the state becauseit is a natural right. This is absolutely historically and empirically false.Negative liberty even understood in its most limited dimension, for instance,as the freedom to practice any religion always requires a stateapparatus equipped with police and a military ready to defend that right(heard of Europes 30 Year War?). No liberty is simply pre-given, found innature; every right requires violence and coercion behind it to succeed institutionally,and so any distinction Britton hopes to secure between negativeand positive rights on the grounds of naturalness is arbitrary.

Funnily, its not quite totally arbitrary Britton does seem to haveone criterium, to distinguish between positive and negative rights. Everyfreedom Britton associates with positive rights are freedoms the workingclass needs to resist domination. Strange coincidence it is almost as iflibertarianisms talk of human rights is designed to be a defense of capitaland not humans.

Britton says capitalism is not inherently violent because the divisionof labor ensures everyone will have a job. Not only does Adam Smithsconcept of the division of labor have very little to do with the question offull employment, but Smith himself saw a need for state intervention tohelp capital function. Further, Karl Marx demonstrated that the unemployedare a benefit to capital; its only by having an unemployed workerto replace your currently employed worker that you can push your employeeswages down as far as possible. Unemployment is as old as capitalism.Rather than acting as though unemployment is a weird fluke, weshould live up to that reality and challenge the paradigm that reproducesit.

Finally, the big question: Why, oh why, dothose merciless lefties want to violently coercemulti-billionaires to give up their hard-earnedcash? Or, as Britton puts it: If Bill Gates hasa net worth of $80 billion and my net worth is$90,000, what moral atrocity has been committed?Let me explain. Gates made his fortune bygrowing his company Microsoft. That companymakes money by selling computer software,among other things. In order for people to buycomputer software, they have to own computers.In order for them to own computers, someonehas to make the computer. The person whomakes the computer is typically a worker livingin gross poverty in the global south. This workercontracts with a capitalist to trade their laborfor money. If this were a fair exchange, by theend of it, the worker would have money and theboss would have a commodity. In reality, by theend of the exchange, the worker has money andthe boss has a commodity and profit. The profitis the difference in value between the amountof money the boss can get away with paying theworker and the amount of money he can sell thecommodity for. So yes, Gates wealth depends onmoral atrocities, and the working class povertyis proof.

Libertarianism is a weird ideology. It stringstogether a bizarre understanding of politicaleconomy and moral philosophy and forms a pasticheof entrepreneurial individualism and abstractmusings about rights and the legitimatestate. In the end though, with its incoherence,internal inconsistencies and empirical failuresput aside, libertarianism should be measuredin terms of its effects. And its primary effect isto perpetuate a capitalist regime that is builtoff of exploitation. Capitalism is a machine forchanging hopes and dreams into toil and suffering.Libertarianism is ultimately just an abstractweapon, an ideological gear in a larger machineused by the few to dominate the many.

Follow this link:
Libertarian Ideology Protects Capital at Workers' Expense - The Oberlin Review