Too many libertarians -- I would say a good majority of them -- in my subjective analysis, are distressingly, even embarassingly, ignorant of history. Theyve read the history books of Tom Woods and DiLorenzo in order to be able to refute the standard, Statist interpretations of historical events in American history (e.g. the notion that the Confederate War of Secession needed to be fought to end slavery, the notion that the War on Poverty has alleviated poverty and not in fact exacerbated it, the notion that Pearl Harbor was an unprovoked attack for which FDR deserves no blame or criticism, the notion that the New Deal and/or WWII ended the Great Depression, _et cetera_), which is all fine, good, and necessary, but then their historical investigations cease thereafter. From then on, they focus only on ethics and economics (and not even economic history, usually) when interacting with one another or to others, and quite frankly those discussions have become repetitive and boring to me anymore. And on the rare moments they do bring up history again, they depict themselves as historical experts by repeating precisely those facts which everyone in libertarianism always repeat over and over. I would like to discuss history more with them, but I can name only about four other libertarians off hand who are knowledgable enough about history such that I can discuss it in ways extending beyond libertarian platitudes. Im regularly shocked at some of the facts of history libertarians dont know; I can expect the typical member of the general population to lack such knowledge, but if youre going to advocate for liberty, you ought to be at least reasonably historically knowledgeable, because properly interpreting _even Statist historians_ own works in accordance with deductive reasoning (as oppose to ideology) shows irrevocably the complete lack of justification for government whatsoever. Repeating over and over, to Statists and other libertarians, the format of logic that since violence against innocents is immoral and government is a monopoly on violence the actions of which always involve violence against innocents, therefore government is an immoral institution the existence of which cannot be justified is obvious and cliche. Pointing these things out to people ignorant of these matters is fine, but when libertarians repeat these platitudes to one another and amongst themselves over and over again, nothing new is being added to the discussion, and everything ultimately disintegrates into incessant, unbridled circle-jerking.
Posted on: Sat, 05 Apr 2014 00:26:48 +0000
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