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Thursday, March 16, 2017

Abandoning Libertarianism

James's main site is down, so to help you while away the time until the site can be repaired, I thought I'd post this response to James's recent post "Heritability of Values."

James, I will respond to your piece about libertarians, with the caveat that I have not watched the video and probably never will. As you have noticed, there is a substantial portion of the "alt-right" that are former libertarians. Since I am one myself, I can give you a little tongue in cheek summary of my "red-pill" experience.

1. I am super smart and highly educated. I believe in climate change and evolution. Proles and Christians are dumb!
2. I can drink whenever I want and use drugs occasionally and still hold down my office job.
3. Have you ever heard of Ayn Rand? She really knew what was up!
4. I learned in school that racism is really bad, and so are sexism, homophobia, transphobia, intersectional white supremacy zzzzzzz sorry, I fell asleep. But I am a really good student so I totally understand. The thing is, welfare is really harmful to minorities, and if we abolish the minimum wage, more people will hire peasants in domestic service positions.
5. The constitution is really great. The government can't take away my rights, it says so right there.

Conclusion: I am really awesome. I have never murdered anyone, and it is not even because it is against the law, it is because of my personal belief in non-violence! All my friends are exactly like me. Why do we even have laws? Why is pot illegal? Why can't I pay my Guatemalan groundskeeper $4/hour? It is more than he was making back home!

6. Wow, the science of genetics is really taking off, Imma go read some wikipedia pages brb.
7. Hmm, it seems quite likely that things like drug addiction and IQ have genetic components. Did you know Native Americans have gene variants that cause alcohol to literally make them crazy? Did you know that white children in the poorest socioeconomic level do better on SATs than black children in the highest level?
8. I think my school teachers and university professors have been lying to me about these things all my life. What else have they been lying about?

(an incomplete list)
a. Academic achievement between races
b. Physical and mental differences between men and women
c. Medical and nutritional advice (see sugar and junk food lobbies)
d. Climate change
e. Abortion, especially the market in dead babies
f. Impacts of diversity on communities
g. Birth control pills
h. Pesticide use and harms thereof
i. Monetary policy and fractional reserve lending
j. Islam is the religion of peace (Thanks GWB!)
k. The objective harm that comes with a gay lifestyle (drug addiction, domestic violence, child abuse, health problems of all kinds, not merely sexually transmitted, many others)

9. The constitution is a piece of paper and nobody cares what is written on it (thanks Chief Justice John Roberts). The US Government has nukes, what do you have?
10. Christians were right about a lot of things after all. I am just a speck in this giant universe, yet here I am. Maybe I am not really an atheist anymore either.

Conclusion: Everybody is not like me. Some people get into drugs and simply melt their brains, I guess they have a right to do that if they want, but it is not nice to see that happen to a loved one. Some people do not have the intellectual wherewithal to survive in the "information economy," maybe endless welfare is not a good idea, but neither is importing more of them in by the millions (why not give eugenics a try? I still don't trust the government). Some people are smart and hard working but they do not have the personality for college or an office job (hi James). Maybe it is not fair to drive down their wages by allowing corporate interests to determine immigration levels and legislate an environment that benefits owners and stockholders over labor. Labor unions can still go pound sand though, especially government labor unions.

I have said and done plenty of stupid things in my life, I am not embarrassed that I used to be a libertarian. Maybe if I were smarter I would have passed through that phase more quickly or skipped it completely. Politically, I don't really have a home, though I like the way things are going. This is just my silly story of how my political thinking changed. Many people could be exposed to the same information that I saw and not change their minds. Others could start out from a position similar to where I am now and go backwards, taking on a social justice mindset.

I think libertarianism is materialist because it stridently atheist.  These are people who are so very smart they have no need of primitive superstitions, and atheism always devolves into materialism.  Stefan Molyneux and Scott Adams did an interview together where they both agreed that even though they are atheists, they prefer the company of Christians over other atheists.  These guys are the prototypical examples of logic-addicted nerd libertarians who have come around to realizing that not everyone is like them, high IQ, hyperlogical, live and let live kind of people who will never commit a crime more serious than cannabis possession.

The question of cultural suicide is the more important one. I don't know what is causing it, I just hope we can get out of the tailspin.

(c) 2017 Lynn Lockhart

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