Dr. Frank on the Blogs of War has blogged an article called Group Think which raises all sorts of interesting issues to those of a libertarian persuasion. He also touches upon one of my earlier bloggings.
I have no stake in the “whither libertarianism” question that appears as the background to many such arguments, and I’m probably missing some of the subtleties of it; but just because the idea of attacking Iraq is a hobbyhorse of “National Greatness” conservatism doesn’t automatically mean it’s a bad idea. Saddam Hussein is dangerous. He’ll have to be dealt with in some way sooner or later, whether or not doing so would be in line with the official principles of libertarianism (whatever they turn out to be.)
Libertarianism is not a political party, it is a social but non-statist meta-context within which political though occurs: a ‘vibe’ if you like. There are no ‘official’ principals and by its very nature there are only a loose series of underpinnings as the ends of libertarianism is simply liberty, rather than, say, tractor production or discouraging one-parent families. In my view at least, all forms of genuine libertarianism revolve around this:
You are not a libertarian unless you accept as axiomatic that, at its core, society must allow individuals to make their own choices in the pursuit of self-defined ends.
I have always thought all the other sundry libertarian principles often quoted, such as ‘Propertarianism’ and the ‘non-initiation of force’ principles all flow from that. Other libertarians see it the other way around.
Can the “aggressive defender” sub-species in de Havilland’s aviary legitimately launch pre-emptive strikes without turning into an Imperialist “predator?”
For sure. The big difference would be going in to destroy a threat and then going home or going in and making all of Arabia and Iraq into an American satrapy, as some seem to be suggesting.
There are those who maintain that any military action on behalf of US/British/Western security is automatically suspect; this, as de Havilland points out, is often elaborated into a belief that “anyone the American and/or British states opposes must therefore be one of the good guys.” That’s the shared target of “anti-idiotarians” where this issue is concerned, isn’t it?
Yes indeed. It seems to me that September 11th was a watershed in that it resulted in an event so stark in its moral simplicity and lacking in the ambiguity that shades Iraq, Israel, Kosovo etc. that the true nature of many was revealed in the shadowless light of the burning twin towers. Much to my astonishment some on the left, like Christopher Hitchens, turned out to be critically rational whilst many who I had thought far better of, were revealed to be crypto-subjectivists so emotionally attached to their unalterable world views as to be incapable of rational moral judgement.
And by the way, I wonder why all my recent articles seem to feature birds in some form or other? Is someone e-mailing me subliminal messages?
