The Death of Libertarianism

~ Clarissa

And that’s when libertarianism finally died:

RIP, libertarianism, which is simply neoliberalism for nerds.

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Published by Clarissa

38 thoughts on “The Death of Libertarianism”

  1. OK, which of the above stances you are considering libertarian?

    And, also, as one of your possible “responses to readers”, how about what is libertarianism, according to you?

    I can imagine individual citizens shooting drug dealers in their neighborhood might qualify as libertarianism for some, but big government shooting people without trial?

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    1. I’m not capable of such depths on a Sunday morning. I only meant that Rand Paul, the most famous libertarian in the country, has eliminated half of his following with this comment.

      But this is a great question about libertarianism. I’ll answer it in a separate post.

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  2. What did Rand Paul have to say about the quote?

    I agree with the general thrust of your argument, just didn’t see where RP in particular came in.

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  4. I didn’t know libertarians were for extrajudicial executions. Aren’t they pro-drug to begin with?

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      1. “Paul is clearly opposing the destruction of the cartel vessel”

        How will libertarians be able to indulge in their favorite mood altering substances if our precious cartels aren’t taken care of?

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        1. This is 100% what all the objections are about.

          Rand lives in a nice neighborhood where he doesn’t have to get all up-close and personal with the current zombie apocalypse. That ideology hardly ever survives contact with the ugly reality.

          Liberals of every stripe love their drugs. Libertarians don’t want their supply interrupted. Progressives don’t want their supply interrupted *and* have to keep their tweaking constituents happy. Dem pols probably enjoying some sweet sweet “propinas” from the cartels. Everybody wins, right?

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        2. It’s also the idea of the “citizen of the world” taken to its ultimate consequences. Everybody is a citizen of the world, so everybody deserves the same due process.

          What remains unaddressed is why this due process should be American and not Venezuelan.

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          1. The universal rights are meant to protect the weak from the strong and the small from the big. For example why should Russians care about Ukrainians rights?

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            1. My friend, “should”, “care” and “rights” in one sentence are beyond what I can handle. 🙂

              Nobody “should care”. The last thing I want from these people is their caring. As for rights, the actual (as opposed to the invented in the West) justification of the war by Russia is precisely that they invaded to defend rights.

              We should all just quit it with rights.

              Russia shouldn’t invade Ukraine because it signed paperwork promising not to do that in exchange for an enormous concession from Ukraine. The US is helping Ukraine because the US also signed that paperwork. At no point was any of this formulated in the language of rights. There can be no rights between countries because there is no authority that can adjudicate between them. There can be agreements, treaties, guarantees. But there can’t be rights.

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        1. It died because Rand Paul found a terrible moment to proclaim his pure beliefs, untouched by reality. We all know at least one family that lost somebody to the drug epidemic. Half of my students buried a sibling, parent or classmate. Nobody is in the mood to care about the “rights” of cartel members.

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          1. Ah, yes, OK, you automatically assume they were cartel members, because the Trump admin, who has been honest about everything else, told you so.

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            1. Have you seen the news out of Charlotte? A young woman is dead because nobody wanted to automatically assume.

              We are all tired of this schtick where people aren’t allowed to notice reality because it might feed into “stereotypes.” Nobody cares anymore.

              Your side had every chance to solve the opioid epidemic and violent crime using your favorite non-assumey methods. You failed. Now sit down and observe how serious people do it.

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              1. Their side’s “dealing with” the opioid epidemic, plus the whole letting repeat offenders roam the streets because “oppression” or “compassion” or whatever… has led to an amazing resurgence in support for public executions.

                Not a stellar track record.

                -ethyl.

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              1. I’ve been trying to explain precisely this with my “rights” post. Rights only make sense within a nation-state. There are no universal rights floating in the ether and inflicting themselves on people outside of any human agency.

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              2. –what due process the constitution grants to non-citizens outside US borders?

                If that were a reasonable argument, it would mean that US can kill non-US people outside of US borders for any reason or no reason at all.

                But mostly the issue boils down to people not trusting either the motives of this administration or its competence. Many people do believe that this administration is capable of blowing up some random boat just to show that they are tough on drugs. Or to intimidate Venezuela. Or just by mistake.

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              3. I thought murdering people in international waters for no good reason was piracy. We don’t have proof beyond Hegseth and Vance’s vacuous statements trying to look tough.

                As for the sides, it doesn’t make much of a difference to you or me personally whether the people in a boat that had left Venezuela that the Trump administration murdered were drug dealers, human traffickers with their cargo, or fishermen. You’re welcome to imagine they were smuggling fentanyl into the US as I understand you need to make up psychologically for all the ways in which this administration is screwing you over.

                How are your grocery prices? Mine have gone up twice already.

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              5. The US has often killed noncitizens outside its borders for reasons of national interest. Sometimes for good reasons, sometimes for sketchy reasons, whether that’s arranging plane crashes for latin American leaders who didn’t sign onto the IMF scheme, or killing Bin Laden, or blowing up wedding parties in Yemen by drone.

                Lots of arguments for and against, but it’s not like it’s some new invention that requires legal justification. There’s lots of precedent.

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            3. The current legal justification, assuming one is needed (maybe not) is that we have declared cartels terrorist organizations. We have a long history of killing terrorists outside the US.

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              1. …and it’s been some days since it happened now.

                Anybody heard any denunciations from the boatmen’s country of origin? Any officials claiming they were innocent fishermen?

                (crickets)

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  6. My two cent is this. We are now at the point of no longer being willing to offer the benefit of the doubt. Doing so in times of peace is good. Doing so in times of strife is not so much. The traitors have given the benefit of the doubt to terrorists, gang members, murders, rapists, thugs of all stripes, and Karens. People are now fed up to the point where when a boat is declared to be drug runners and sunk the majority doesn’t blink an eye. Nor should we.

    There is a phrase, I think its from Warhammer 40K, but I could be mistakes. “Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent.” For the last 20+ years the various governments of the West have been guilty of letting the wicked loose upon the innocent. As we have seen repeatedly over the last few years, in England, in Germany, in Canada, and in New York as well as other places in the US. The wicked are allowed to loot, pillage, assault, kill, and rape at will. Assuming they are found they are let out of jail years early and from already massively reduced sentences on top of that. Yet at the same time those who defend others from these monsters are thrown in jail for years at a time. They are sued. They are lambasted in the media.

    So yea I’m fed up with it, and so too are many others. So yes by all means sink the damn boats, burn the fields the drugs are grown in, and if need be erase the cartels buildings and compounds from the face of the earth. Will some innocents be caught up in the mess. Yes, but it still needs to be done. Better for a handful of innocents to be killed by accident and the wicked be removed from the earth. Than to allow them to continue to act unopposed causing countless more innocents to be killed or harmed.

    In the comics, batman always states something about if you kill someone the number of killers doesn’t go down. I have always found this amongst other things the comics preach to be ludicrous nonsense. If you kill a killer, you are saving all their future victims. If you go on as a vigilante to kill three more, the number of killers in the world absolutely goes down. Its basic math in its simplest form.

    So to sum up my point sink the damn ships and ignore any bleeding hearts demanding that you allow them to sacrifice more innocent lives on the alter of the leftists misplaced empathy and feelings. If they care so much, they can buy a one way ticket to go explain to the cartels in person why they should stop what they are doing.

    • – W

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    1. I agree. The murderer of Iryna Zarutska was given endless second chances. Even now a bunch of freaks posted a GoFund page in his name to combat “racism.” It was pulled down by the company but this is evidence that some people are willing to extend endless chances to the most heartless, horrible criminals. We are all tired of the appeals to understanding the historical trauma that supposedly justifies these maniacs. Enough already. We see people burned alive on a train, pushed under a carriage, a teenager murdered at a track meet. Enough already. I can’t drive home from St Louis without fearing I’ll be hit by a stray bullet. I haven’t been to downtown St Louis in a decade because I’m afraid of violent vagrants. It shouldn’t be this way.

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        1. –Does anybody know?

          The facebook showed it to me. And this demonstrates that unless one has actively purged their social media of anything non-progressive and successfully created an echo chamber, one would know. I am not sure knowing would help much in case of the people who think that “not supporting stereotypes”, or not agreeing on anything with the conservatives are the most important things in the world.

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            1. Sorry, I did not mean Facebook showed me something in NYTimes. Facebook showed me post about the actual murder. Do not remember whose post.

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              1. Yes, it’s been on social media. The point is that there’s a blackout on MSM. The Wikipedia article on the murder keeps getting deleted. .

                Sweden and the UK have both finally reported on the story. When are we going to get coverage in the US? It was wall-to-wall coverage for Jussie Smollett’s hoax. And he was perfectly alive and unharmed. Why can’t we get coverage of this murder? The president spoke about it. International leaders have spoken. It should be big news.

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              2. Ah! ABC has finally posted a story about Iryna. At the end of the second day of worldwide outrage. One would think they get their news from carrier pigeons.

                But at least they finally published it.

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      1. And even this wouldn’t have been possible if Musk hadn’t bought twitter. For all his faults, and there are too many to count, he’ll forever have my gratitude for this act alone. If it weren’t for twitter discourse, this story would’ve been dead and buried.

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