James Leroy Wilson's one-man magazine.

Tuesday, September 03, 2019

Liberty and Love

Cathy Reisenwitz writes about people in the libertarian movement who turned out to be Nazis.

How can that happen, as the two ideologies are diametrically opposed?

Well, I could see it in the words of Acton, taken in isolation:
Liberty is not a means to a higher political end.  It is itself the highest political end. 
The political end is liberty, but what you do with liberty to achieve your personal ends, or good, or happiness, is up to you.

That's why some bigots see a libertarian legal order as an opportunity to carve out the life they want. Through property rights, including racially-restrictive covenants, free association, and freedom of contract, they could, theoretically and if their numbers are large enough, self-segregate into their own communities, excluding any and all they find undesirable. They could ban certain behaviors and demand conformity on their own land and in their own contracts.

I view bigotry as a vice, not a crime, so if some people of like mind want to use their liberty to isolate themselves from the open society, I wouldn't try to stop them. But this is why libertarianism can attract racists and intolerant religionists just as it can attract people culturally on the opposite end like sex workers, recreational drug users, and non-conformists.

What seems at odds with the concept of liberty as the highest end, is to use that liberty to voluntarily place restrictions on personal freedom in the name of cultural purity or tribal identity. That's what the fascist strain in some libertarian circles would do. Liberty is prized by them only because it gives them the freedom to be more authoritarian and hateful in their private life.

Can this strain be fully expunged from the libertarian movement?



I doubt it. Nothing is all one thing or all another. Nothing is all good or all bad. But I'd hope the hateful elements can be discouraged.

For what bigots in the libertarian movement forget is the foundation, the ethic that makes liberty desirable in the first place. We value liberty because we value the individual. Not just in the formal legal context of liberty, but with Kant  and most spiritual traditions, we affirm individuals as ends in themselves.

We value liberty because it is how we can love our neighbor as ourselves. While liberty is the highest political end, love, in my opinion, is the highest end. It encompasses everything good and brings about happiness and well-being for one and for all. Liberty is a corollary and consequence of the law of love, and is a necessary precondition for love to be expressed fully.

Politicians view the people as means to their own ends, not as ends in themselves. They're the ones who traffic in hate and fear.

I would hope the libertarian movement is not like that. Hate should not be welcome there.

James Leroy Wilson writes from Nebraska. Follow him on Facebook and Twitter. If you find value in his articles, your support through Paypal helps keep him going. Permission to reprint is granted with attribution.

1 comment:

  1. Good work connecting concepts that cannot be isolated but sometimes are.

    ReplyDelete