TAMPA, March 28, 2013 – This week’s anti-libertarian nonsense is “libertarians are heartless.”
There are many variations on this theme. Libertarians oppose government-run education so they must not want poor people to get an education. They oppose government-run healthcare so they must want poor, sick people to die. They oppose government-subsidized housing so they must want poor people to be homeless, too (if they aren’t already). Libertarians are selfish, amoral…You get it.
Libertarians also oppose state religions, but no one makes the claim that libertarians are against religion. I wonder why? It seems to follow.
The people who make these claims don’t understand what libertarianism is and don’t really understand the nature of government or their relationship to it, either.
Libertarians do not object to you helping the poor. They merely object to you forcing someone else to help the poor.
Libertarianism answers only one question: When is violence or threatening violence justified? The libertarian answer is only in self-defense. That includes defending your life from an immediate attack upon it or defending yourself against a previous theft of property or other crime.
This is where libertarians face reality and their opponents don’t. Libertarians understand that all government action is violent action. That’s not because people in the government aren’t doing it right. It’s because that is what government is designed to be. Violence is its raison d’etre.
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