The Question Libertarians Can’t Answer (a response to Stefan Molyneux)

Spitty says:

I prefer Ayn Rand’s formulation that society should forbid the initiation of force, rather than a non-aggression principle. Private property cannot be called an initiation of force by any means, if the property was acquired honestly. There is nothing wrong with using violence in this formulation, if you are only retaliating against someone who started it first.

In fact, Rand was critical of libertarianism for some of the same reasons you point out, in that it regarded only issues of economics and politics while ignoring ethics and morality.

Wayne Earl says:

Aurini,

May I provide, if you will, a Third Side alternative view that I developed almost quite by accident in my early 20s as my time in college shifted from studying political science to engineering? I’ve discussed this with folks over the years, and no one has been able or willing to provide arguments against it. The only other person I am aware of who has posited a similar idea to this is Jack Donovan in The Way of Men, which makes a whole lot of sense, given the very parallel yet entirely independent roads that both Jack and myself took , both of which let us to the Manosphere. Note that Jack and I separately and individually developed these complementary ideas, just that the two of us, as individuals, got here via a very similar thought path.

My idea is this: We vastly underestimate the importance of non-verbal communication, that (if you will) Lesser Black Magic men and women employ to weave social bonds between each other. A nation, a state, a township, a village, a clan, a gang – these all describe the same fundamental thing – a clotting together of the bonds of frith, or peaceful obligation to each other. A human relationship wi another human is characterized by these bonds, where each is responsible to and responsible for other members of the relationship set. The boundaries of commonly formed relationships codify and fossilize over time, but their only real strength is they rely on selfish self interest, which is the strongest glue of all – in the end, the person that cares more than anyone else possibly can about weather or not that I live or die is me, myself (you if you come with torches and pitchforks, you best be prepared to receive every conceivable horror and genocidal act of violence I can summon in defense of my own life, as my life has value only to myself in that last stand). If the literal survival of person A literally depends on person B standing shoulder to shoulder on the line between Us and Them, then you will find these men forging a bond breakable only by death. As Jack says, the Way of Man is the Way of the Gang.

If this is really true, then this implies my actual idea: Man has a built in scaling problem that cannot be fixed, it is organic to the man, and is as a part of him as the opposable thumbs he uses to grip his sword in his final stand. Death is the only way to sever the bond of the gang or the war band – a physical death, not an abstract or intellectual parting of ways. All cultural mores in all cultures, all “common law”, all states, all governments, all economic systems, every culture, state, everywhere in the world from the start of history until today is actually a weak,artificial attempt to replicate the bond of the war brother, the bond of the gang, writ large. Because this bond becomes less and less personal as you add geographical size and population density, the bond of blood must be artificially replaced with the bond of thought – codes of honor, codes of law, common law….the US Constitution. NATO. The greater the size, the less personal investment the individual man has, the weaker the bond.

We do not see a Libertarian state, and we never will,because libertarianism iand of itself is a fantasy. It is attractive to the men of the West because it stirs the atrophied core of the blood bond in all of us, but lets get honest here – libertarianism is a fantasy, born of men who have never known the bonds of war on the battlefield or the bonds of the gang in the neighborhood. It is the fetish of the computer nerd, who thinks that a relationship online is nothing other than a delusion.

All empires crumble because man has a scaling problem.we are not social creatures. We are individuals, who form bonds of brotherhood in order that we might survive another night in the forest. We are animals with forebrains, and nothing more.

The only real answer that has ever worked, and will ever work, is the one that Jack Donavan has suggested – start the world.

Ed: I’ve spoken before about the blood and the earth being the foundation of a society; this is somewhere between a metaphysical and a sociological statement. Man does not live on bread alone, and a state is more than mere regulation of commerce and national defence. Well put: Start the World.

American Yogi says:

OK just finished watching and have a fourth point to add.

4. You say at the 16:05 mark that the Indians in Canada “have a very similar religion and culture to us.” May I ask what religion? Because I believe you are referring to Indian Hindus and Sikhs. You can on to say that the Muslims are at odds with Canadian religion and culture. But if by Canadian religion you mean Christianity, Islam is much closer to Christianity than Hinduism or Sikhism.

In fact, Islam is the natural result of Abrahamic Monotheism.

The mother of Middle Eastern Abrahamic Monotheism Judaism and its 2 offspring are Christianity and Islam. They have the same old prophets, the same old stories, and are stemming from the same cultural and geographical environment.

You must understand that an ideology that says there is only “one true god” will naturally result in tyranny and terrorism, if only psychological terrorism.

Monotheism is anti-religious freedom and anti-freedom of thought.

Hindus on the other hand have a completely different approach.

There’s is one of completely religious freedom and freedom of thought.

This is why so many persecuted groups of other religions; Zorastrians, Bahais, Jews, Tibetan Buddhist refugees, have sought political and religious asylum in India.

Hindus can live side by side in respect and peace with other religious groups as long as those groups return the respect, which all of the above I listed have.

However, as you may know, there has been some issues with Muslims in India. That is because extreme Monotheism teaches that there is only “one true god” – the God of Abraham – and all others must convert to that.

For this reason Christian missionaries go everywhere on earth, not to experience other religions and cultures, appreciate and learn from them, but rather to destroy them through religious conversions.

This is a type of psychological terrorism.

Christian terrorism used to be physically violent, but it has become humble and chastened as of late so the only terrorism it inflicts now is psychological and cultural.

Islam is still inflicting the physical terrorism but we must understand that an extremist ideology such as “one true god for all” MUST result in form of terrorism or another.

Such an ideology is not at all comfortable with liberty. Not at all comfortable with religious pluralism and the freedom to choose to worship whoever or whatever I please, or not to worship at all.

So I disagree that Hindu religion is similar to Christianity because Hinduism allows for so many choices – spiritually speaking.

Islam is similar to Christianity but it just looks at odds with it because Christianity has been chastened by laws that ensure my religious liberty. But Christians are still not comfortable with taking a place as only one amongst many world religions that we can all choose from now, are they?

Ed: The root differences between Islam and Christianity, and the similarities between Hinduism and Christianity, are more primal than mere historical documentation; the latter two privilege objective reality over the relative, as opposed to Islam which privileges the relative truth. The acknowledgement of an Objective Truth greater than ourselves leads to humbleness, and religious tolerance, finding its ultimate form in the separation of Church and State.

Part of the reason Progressives so love Islam is because of their identical ur-theology.

American Yogi says:

“Part of the reason Progressives so love Islam is because of their identical ur-theology.”

I’m not familiar with the term “ur-theology”. What does it mean?

I don’t think progressives love Islam. What they love is the under-dog, the “oppressed minority” and Muslims in the West fit that bill.

Similarly, in India, the Indian progressives always side with Indian Christians and foreign Christian missionaries in India because they are a small, supposedly “oppressed” minority there.

Of course Christians are not oppressed in India but they will claim like that.

In India there is a Maoist-Christian axis that is seeking to undermine the stability of the nation.

Ordinary church goers in the West are giving donations to “missions” in South Asia with no knowledge that their money is being used to fuel a communist separatist movement.

Google “Naxalites”.

Ed: The ur-theology refers to whether they privilege reason or emotion first.