From: Dan Fabulich (daniel.fabulich@yale.edu)
Date: Thu Dec 07 2000 - 10:41:41 MST
When I said that Libertarianism requires a moral revolution, I was
pointing out the rather obvious fact that if everybody around you
believes that it is one's moral duty to relinquish one's freedoms, you
included, they'll (surprise!) start up a government and initiate force
against you.
People have to vote libertarian, that is, they have to vote to
dismantle the government, or revolt, or whatever, or else the
government will exist and meddle (as people currently vote for it to
do). But they'll never do that unless their morals change rather
drastically.
Samantha argued that it doesn't require that everyone get it... it
simply requires that everyone let everyone else alone (unless they
initiate force). In other words, they don't have to understand
libertarianism, they just have to be libertarians in action. That
sounds like a moral revolution to me. It's not happening this week, I
promise you that.
Similarly, Michael Lorrey said that all it takes is for self defense
to be acceptable and for the initiation of force to be unacceptable.
But I don't know what sort of acceptability one would be talking about
unless it were either legal acceptability or moral acceptability.
Legal acceptability would follow only from moral acceptability; the
people must choose to act to prevent initiation of force. Now they
believe that it's everyone's moral duty to accept certain kinds of
initiations of force and to initiate force against others under
various conditions. This would have to change before libertarianism
started to happen.
I'm saying that people have to decide to get out of everyone else's
way for libertarianism to happen. They don't want that. They want to
be controlled, and they want you to be controlled as well. Unless
they change their minds on that, unless there's a moral revolution, it
won't happen.
-Dan
-unless you love someone-
-nothing else makes any sense-
e.e. cummings
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