Vox Popoli: Why John C. Wright is not a libertarian

The trouble with big ‘L’ Libertarianism is that its attaches itself to lot of crackpot positions in the name of promoting personal liberty and the “no harm” doctrine. Like we shouldn’t be concerned about Iran and North Korea wanting to build nuclear weapons, because after all the USA has them and since there is no moral difference between the USA and any other nation state it would be two-faced and hypocritical for the USA to oppose any other country’s effort to arm themselves with nukes. Sounds a lot like the position of Marxist Left which wants America to commit suicide, doesn’t it? Which is why the Libertarian Party is politically irrelevant and the majority of self-described “Libertarians” holding public office have had to run as Republicans to get elected. Also when you peal back the onion you find that a lot of so-called Libertarians aren’t looking for liberty so much as they are seeking “license”, the permission to engage in their favorite vice. Such as smoking pot (and selling pot). Pot is for losers and layabouts, or, at best, the sick. Most conservatives recognize this which is why they generally oppose the legalization of pot for “recreational” use, because they don’t want their children to be tempted to start using it, like they might if it were a legal substance.  And they don’t see that as being contradictory to the ideals of personal liberty and independence from big government control. After all Big government wants nothing so much as unambitious and unserious people who are dependent on government handouts, which describes many drug dependent people.

In which Mr. Wright explains why he is no longer a libertarian:

I often introduce myself as a recovering libertarian. It is not an entirely serious introduction, but it is not entirely frivolous either.

Why “recovering”? Sad experience teaches that any ideology, even a sound one, like libertarianism, is intoxicating. The appeal of ideology is the appeal of elegance. Just as Newton reduced all motions from the orbits to apples falling to three expressions, every intellectual craves a simple formula to explain the human condition. Libertarianism is based on a single principle that limits the state’s use of force to retaliation against fraud and trespass.

Nearly all the natural moral rules all men carry in their hearts are satisfied by the simple rule that you may do as you like provided you leave your neighbor free to do as he likes. No neighbor may rob, defraud nor attack another.

The intoxication comes with each case that fits neatly to the theory. Natural morality agrees that wars to defend the innocent are permissible, as is killing in self defense. Natural morality agrees that a man should keep his contracts, and so on.

The theory says the state must remain carefully neutral in all cultural and moral questions: the use of intoxicating drugs for recreational use, suicide assisted or no, polygamy, prostitution, gambling, pornography, duels to the death (provided only all participants fully agree!) or, for that matter, copulating with a corpse on the roof of your house in plain view of the neighbors’ children playing in their backyards, and then eating the corpse, all must be legal.

For me, the intoxicating spell ended in three sharp realizations, each one as forceful as a thunderbolt.

Read the rest of it there.

As for me, I've always been a small-l libertarian rather than a large-L one. These days, I consider myself more of a Christian nationalist, or a Western Civilizationist than a libertarian per se. Human liberty is an important priority, but we now have a sound historical basis for understanding that a free and open society of the sort that Libertarianism assumed is simply not an option.

http://voxday.blogspot.com/2015/12/why-john-c-wright-is-not-libertarian.html