From: Charles Hixson (charleshixsn@earthlink.net)
Date: Fri Oct 04 2002 - 11:24:36 MDT
Rafal Smigrodzki wrote:
>James Hughes wrote:
>...
>
>>So the simple-minded dichotomy that leftists and liberals are
>>collectivists (except when they accidentally end up defending
>>individual rights) and conservatives are individualists (except when
>>they accidentally support authoritarianism) doesn't really work for
>>me. At least argue that libertarianism is beyond the traditional left
>>and right.
>>
>>
>>
>### But isn't it starkly collectivist to insist on the state provision of
>education, health care, protection from petty crime, and other goods that
>are easy to buy privately (and much cheaper, too)?
>
>Rafal
>
>
>
It's not collectivist, but it's not libertarian either. Perhaps there are more than two possibilities here? A kibbutz was collectivist. A commune is likely to be collectivist (i.e., if the people in it don't adhere to some kind of collectivist ethics, it's likely to fall apart). But note that there's nothing in principle that prevents communes from being anarchist (some have been).
Perhaps what's really going on is that people tend to have certain agendas for what they want to get done, and they try to find and justify ways to do it. Some people are most interested in, e.g., protecting weak people from domination by stronger people. So they try to find some way to do this. Others are more interested in keeping the government from being too intrusive into their life. So they try to find some way to do this. Most people would agree that both of these goals are desireable. The problem comes when attempting to solve one of the problems acerbates the other. As often happens. Then we find labels for the people who are most interested in the various problems, and think of them as if they were all the same. But this isn't actually what's going on, this is just an easy way to think about it. An oversimplified way, that works well enough if you know all the people, but doesn't work so well if you are trying to reach an accomodation with strangers.
-- -- Charles Hixson Gnu software that is free, The best is yet to be.
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