To settle an ongoing debate between libertarians who believe in the importance of non-governmental social institutions, and those who believe that they should all also be smashed down as examples of hierarchies of oppression, wouldnt it be great if we could do a scientific test. Create two libertarian revolutions, so to speak. Have one limit itself to small government, and the other to expand to include freedom from the tyranny of tradition, institutions, conventional morality etc, and then see how each turns out. Would be a rather good test, wouldnt it, like East/West Germany was evidence of the inability of centrally planned economies to work. Pity we cant do such a thing, isnt it. Oh wait. This actually did happen. At about the same time, we had the U.S. Revolution, which limited itself to small government, and the french revolution - which, and this is critical to note, was founded on libertarian principles (look up The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen of 1789 them if you dont believe me) but also set about to try to free people from other forms of oppression (incidentally why Burke supported the former and not the latter). Which one ended up leading to a freer society, I wonder...
Posted on: Sun, 20 Apr 2014 06:04:24 +0000
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