Liberty Maven“The End Of Libertarianism” Rebuttal Done Perfect By Anthony Gregory
October 21st, 2008 12:42 am | by Marc Gallagher | Published in Activism, Bailouts, Banking, Big Government, Commentary, Debt, Economics, Federal Reserve, Free Market, government spending, Libertarianism, Liberty, Media, Politics, Ron Paul, Socialism | 4 Responses
Newsweek and Slate magazine published a putrid article by Jacob Weisberg that argues that the recent financial collapse signals the death of libertarianism. It is one of those articles that forces your jaw to drop lower and lower with each idiotic word. Reason magazine’s editor Matt Welch wrote a good rebuttal to the article, but the rebuttal written by Anthony Gregory on LewRockwell.com perfectly aligns with my own view.
Whenever government failure destroys lives and wealth, we can easily become frustrated as we see the crisis blamed on freedom itself. Gun control fails to stop a massacre, and the freedom to own guns is attacked. Narco-terrorism claims the lives of many, and we hear the problem is not enough law enforcement against drugs. Destructive intervention follows destructive intervention, always in the name of erasing whatever allegedly dysfunctional liberty remains.
Jacob Weisberg has an unbelievably asinine article blaming the Wall Street collapses on libertarianism. We who believe in individual liberty supposedly brought on this recession. Specifically, the country has “narrowly avoided a global depression and is mercifully pointed toward merely the worst recession in a long while. This is thanks to a global economic meltdown made possible by libertarian ideas.” Thus the collapse signals “The End of Libertarianism.”
It is hard to grasp that someone could actually believe this. At first, we might be tempted to assume the author of the above nonsense is being deeply and deliberately dishonest. But perhaps sheer intellectual error could suffice to explain the problem.
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October 21st, 2008 at 9:21 am (#)
There is a disturbing trend in America today. A growing number of people–and Jacob Weisberg is apparently one of them–who only feel secure in an atmosphere of expanding statism. They believe that, ultimately, the State is the highest acheivement of mankind and that all social progress inevitably culminates in it. Government is the fix for everything. Personal responsibility is an alien concept.
October 21st, 2008 at 9:41 am (#)
My favorite paragraph, which sums it all up, is this:
“What we really see in Weisberg’s approach toward economic collapse and 9/11, both of which he blames on not enough government, is that he, like all who see the world in this way, is no less ideological than we are. He is not bold enough to be a Marxist, nor is he one of us. But he is no less committed to ideas than we are. For him, it is the idea of the managerial, modern, democratic state as protector, guarantor of national safety, stabilizer of the economy. So when the economy flops, revealing the colossal folly of five generations of government intervention, he must blame freedom and say we need the state to do more. And when terrorists attack, showing the utter disaster of trusting an imperialist trillion-dollar empire and security state to keep us safe at home from anyone determined to hijack a plane and cause mayhem, it must be because the government simply did not do enough. It is this mentality that is truly utopian, for it seeks to create a world though state planning and violence that is somehow more equal, more rational, more stable and perfect than what people can do through peaceful and voluntary cooperation and honest competition. Whenever anything goes wrong, no matter how big and active the state, the answer is always more state power.”
October 22nd, 2008 at 9:46 pm (#)
“Whenever anything goes wrong, no matter how big and active the state, the answer is always more state power.”
Yes, and this is true even when “state power” is what caused the problem in the first place. When government fails, the fix is always MORE government.
October 23rd, 2008 at 3:36 am (#)
Between the French President’s ridiculous allegations that free-market capitalism is responsible for the recent financial nonsense, and this Weisberg piece, I have to wonder if anyone is capable of thinking for themselves anymore. It’s astounding how some people can serve up a constant string of boilerplate rhetoric to suit every occasion with little more than indirect logical relationships at play. It gives me the same impulse you’d have if someone told you, with conviction, that their car refused to start because their brakes were shot.