One of the most appealing things about working with Libertarian Samizdata is the opportunity to show the many faces of the libertarian philosophy and the people behind it. Libertarians aren’t a bunch of humourless ideologues who spend all their time pondering pin heads. We’re real people who love liberty because we love life and desire to live it to the fullest. We play music, do sports, ride bikes, drive fast cars, ski, fly airplanes, get drunk, fall in love, go to churches or not, read porn or not, and believe it or not, party until dawn with our non-libertarian friends… without ever once mentioning politics.
If you come to us looking for an enlightenment or a revealed truth you will be very disappointed. Rather than answers, we give you questions; rather than proscriptions we tell you to think and to take responsibility for your own life. Of course if you do find comfort in some strange -ism you might find us a community tolerant of whatever strangeness you believe… so long as you do it peacefully.
Libertarianism does have core ideas and core beliefs. No one can be a libertarian without accepting the noncoercion principle. You must accept that I have a right to do anything I damn well please so long as I do not threaten you with direct violence to person or property and I use resources acquired honestly to do whatever it is I wish to do. I can’t use force, fraud or theft to take from you what I “need” for my lifestyle. I am both free to act as I please and wholly responsible for the results. If you are certain I’m a damn fool and will probably kill myself, you are free to attempt to talk me out of my bad behavior if you can get me to listen voluntarily. Otherwise you will have to wait until reality teaches me its’ harsh lessons. If the time comes when I am ready and contrite enough to beg for help and if you are of good enough heart to assist, you are free to do so.
Alternatively, if I attempt to steal from you or threaten you, it is your right to use whatever force is necessary to stop me even if it means my death. Libertarians are not pacifists. You are always in the right when you defend your person and property and loved ones against those who would do them harm.
Understanding non-coercion as an idea is the simple part. But ideas are fuzzy things when brought across the dream bridge to the physical world, a world in which maniacs fly airplanes into office buildings. What action does a libertarian take against a threat like that? The extremes are easy to judge. Few libertarians would agree that we should have had troops in Somalia or Panama. Most would agree that September 11th, 2001 and December 7th, 1941 were sufficient causus belli for any society, libertarian or otherwise. Some don’t and that is their right.
There are numerous philosophical strands that wend their way through the space of ideas and dump their passengers in pretty much the same location. If one thinks of ideas as points in space, then libertarians are those who are neighbors in that thought-space. Each will have their own unique perspective on how and why they ended up there.
However different our journeys we have all ended up with similar ideas. A belief that individuals know better what is good for them than any collective; that more individual liberty leads to better, happier lives; that government intervention even with the best of intentions fails to deliver the goods; that the vast majority of the several billion humans on this planet are decent, honourable and just plain nice.
If you’re really curious about us, try taking this little quiz. It’s not perfect, it’s probably not scientific, but you’ll come away from it with a sense of what all these crazy libertarians believe in. And who knows? Maybe you’re one of us.
