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From: kfl%mx.lcs.mit.edu@MC.LCS.MIT.EDU.UUCP
Newsgroups: mod.politics
Subject: Libertarian viewpoints
Message-ID: <12231710098.14.MCGREW@RED.RUTGERS.EDU>
Date: Mon, 18-Aug-86 02:30:20 EDT
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Posted: Mon Aug 18 02:30:20 1986
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    From: Eyal mozes <eyal%wisdom.bitnet@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU>

    Libertarians take as a basic assumption that government
    intervention is evil. They can't (and don't want to) use reason
    and morality to support this assumption, since that would require
    advocating absolute truth and absolute values, and that's anathema
    to libertarianism; ...

  I strongly disagree.  Libertarians do use reason and morality.
Heck, our magazine is called _Reason_.  Who says there are no absolute
values?  Slavery, robbery, torture, and murder are evil.  Those are
absolute values.  One can argue that they aren't, that they are
sometimes justified.  If one does, I have no argument.  I just want no
part of the system founded on the notion that slavery, etc, are ok.

    The result is that they have no answer to those who say "I don't
    regard your position as moral".

  I have lots of answers.  Many kilbytes of them so far.  As do
several other contributors to this list.

    ... if you read, for example, Murray Rothbard, who is widely
    regarded as the intellectual leader of libertarianism,

  Not by me.

    you can see that most of the views he holds on concrete issues -
    such as his praise for the PLO, his sympathetic evaluation of
    soviet foreign policy, and his view of the USA as the world's
    "main danger to peace and freedom" - are totally incompatible with
    genuine advocacy of individual rights, and identical with the
    views of most socialists.

  I've never heard of the guy.  These are not my positions, and I
doubt they are the positions of any other libertarian on this list.

    Ayn Rand was the only one to fully and consistently take such an
    approach, and, as a result, she gave the only full, consistent
    rational and moral defense of individual rights;

  I was going to suggest that you read her works, except you seem to
be already familiar with them.

    her writings (particularly "Atlas Shrugged", "The Virtue of
    Selfishness" and "Capitalism: the Unknown Ideal") are the only
    antidote both to libertarianism and to socialism,

  Huh?  She never uses the word, but it is clear that she IS a
libertarian.

    and are a must read for anyone seriously interested in political
    theory.

  I agree with you there!
                                                              ...Keith

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