From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Wed Aug 21 2002 - 15:11:13 MDT
On Wed, Aug 21, 2002 at 04:19:43PM -0400, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote:
>
> The reason why most people do not vote libertarian, IMO, is that
> libertarianism demands intellectual and moral purity which is hard to attain
> for the social conservatives (who want to use violence to enforce their
> customs), and socialists (who want to use force to satisfy their feelings of
> financial envy).
Hmm, if holding an ideology demands intellectual and moral purity it will
never catch on. In fact, the few holders of the ideology will likely be
the worst hypocrites.
Perhaps the problem is (at least partially) that so many libertarians
try to make out their ideology as something for the pure? If it is seen
as something that only works if a sizeable population has become prime
movers, then most people will view it as impractical and not worth
bothering with.
Personally, I think this demand for perfection is the worst problem of
most ideologies today. The irony is that libertarianism is based on
liberal thought, and that is one of the few systems that does not
presuppose people to be perfect or perfectible.
-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension! asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/ GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y
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