These libertarians are also notoriously guilty of pretending that their favorite kinds of coercion aren’t. Threatening force to deny another person use of one’s land, or one’s house, is coercion. A system of private property is a system of coercion. It may be justified coercion. It is justified coercion. But then the question is: What justifies it? The coercive protection of property is justified because people do better with it than without it. If people do better in a system that defines rights to property a bit less strictly, and coercively guarantees an economic minimum, then that is justified coercion. It’s not really a philosophical question whether it is or not. Justified coercion, like the coercion in the protection of property, isn’t wrongfully liberty-limiting, but it does limit liberty.

If libertarianism is the view that coercion is never social or emotional, and that coercive limits to liberty are justified only in defense of private property, or in the enforcement of contracts, then libertarianism is false, and I am not a libertarian. If libertarianism is the view that human well-being is best promoted by ensuring “that every man may claim the fullest liberty to exercise his faculties compatible with the possession of like liberty to every other man,” then I am a libertarian. If this is a libertarian view, then the goal to minimize or abolish wrongfully liberty-limiting social norms is a libertarian goal.

I find myself in complete agreement. Living in civilization, I enjoy the benefits of being a short walk from a downtown metropolis and put up with what I consider a reasonable level of freedom-shackling. I certainly make efforts to minimize it, though, by a) not owning a car, b) renting, c) living in a state with no income tax. I also further voluntarily tax myself by trying to buy local when possible.

While this is all well and good, there are great (large, not good) ills which afflict us as a majority-rules society. One of them is taxes which target income rather than consumption. The so-called “progressive” tax is especially wrong-headed, but even the income tax pales in comparison to the horrifying ways that our tax money is used — the Iraq war, corporate welfare, and the destruction of our civil liberties with wiretaps and ever more overreaching federal agencies.

..which leads to this interesting snippet from a link in Will’s above post:

Free people do all sorts of things you won’t like, and they are no less free (in any libertarian sense) for it. Claiming free people aren’t really free until you see certain patterned outcomes you like is the root of all tyranny and rhetoric unbecoming a libertarian.

I must admit that I fall into this trap occasionally — perhaps frequently — because I don’t understand how people would a) not want the best (read as: most free) for themselves, or b) voluntarily give up rights of their own in order to make sure that party B doesn’t have them.

In the case of public education and school choice, while there can be state-sponsored alternatives like public schools they should not be forced upon those who would rather choose to send their children to a [better] private school. Doing so limits choice — freedom — for the sake of a lower quality product for all, and seriously limiting the ability of lower/lower-middle class parents from giving their children a higher quality education and enabling them to not be locked into that (for lack of a better word) caste.

I don’t understand why opponents of education privatization (or at least vouchers) would willingly give up MY freedom to affordably send my kids where I want so that they can shut their brains off and not worry about where their kids will go. I can’t understand the motivation of those who openly admit to being okay with sacrificing my rights. Come into my home yourself and do so rather than hiding behind a ballot. Want to force me to fight your war? You are going to have to do so with a gun to my head and my hands tied behind my back. I suppose it is easy to cowardly vote away the rights of others when you don’t have to look them in the face while you are doing it, when the victims are nameless and faceless statistics.

So sayeth former Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr:

“The right to swing my fist ends where the other man’s nose begins.”

When it comes to religion, I think it is reasonable to expect religious organizations like the LDS to respect others’ rights and not just those of its members. Particularly if they wish to retain their tax-exempt status (which I think is bullshit to begin with.) You would think that a religious organization — particularly one which has been persecuted for their own unconventional take on marriage — would understand the golden rule and at least pretend to abide by it.

As my buddy Will states, we still have quite a ways to go..

America becomes no worse as it becomes more secular. And American atheists would be both happier and more cooperative if we were less marginalized by our culture.

Also, the fact that non-religious Americans (who don’t lie about it) are basically disqualified from high public office ensures that many of the most rational and intellectually accomplished people in our society cannot participate in electoral politics.

In closing, enjoy some wise words (and, caution, some eye-roll-inducing corniness) from a guy I typically dislike hearing the voice of:

The possibility that everyone is born with the potential to experience both same-sex and opposite-sex attraction is borne out by the anthropologists Clelland Ford and Frank Beach in their pioneering study, Patterns Of Sexual Behaviour (1965). They examined dozens of tribal-based societies all over the world, including many where homosexual relations were common and accepted. In some, all young men went through a period of homosexuality as part of their rite of passage to manhood, and then later switched to heterosexuality and got married. Ford and Beach concluded that human sexuality was predisposed to bisexuality and that a person’s subsequent sexual orientation was largely the product of social learning and expectation: “Men and women who are totally lacking in any conscious homosexual leanings are as much a product of cultural conditioning as are the exclusive homosexuals who find heterosexual relations distasteful and unsatisfying. Both extremes represent movement away from the original, intermediate condition which includes the capacity for both forms of sexual expression”.

..thus reinforcing the idea that sexuality is in fact not binary, and that it is perfectly natural for a majority of people to engage in various sexual activities with the same gender — diluting the impact of the gay stereotype in association with homosexual behavior.

These insights suggest that if society ended its favouritism towards straightness and its chastisement of gayness, same-sex desire would, since it is an intrinsic human potentiality, be much more widespread. This doesn’t necessarily mean that a higher proportion of the population would be lesbian and gay. More likely, bisexuality would become the norm, and the prevalence of both exclusive heterosexuality and exclusive homosexuality would diminish.

I see this as a good thing. Call me a homophobe if you wish, but I do not find stereotypical gay men in any way appealing, sexually or otherwise. This distaste is not borne of any self-hatred, but of contempt for those who let themselves be so easily defined by others. As I told John, I try not to be definable with a single word — be it “fag”, “geek”, “emo” or what have you. To consider oneself gay or bisexual does not necessitate that you adhere to the applicable stereotypes. Though many people do, even if only subconsciously, and that irritates me greatly.

Adherence to negative stereotypes helps to perpetuate them and give them value. It doesn’t make me a homophobe to look down upon homosexuals (declared or otherwise) who are walking manifestations of a negative stereotype. By not adhering to it myself, I am helping to defeat it as an inaccurate label of homosexuals, whereas they are proponents of it and make it more difficult for me to fight it.

Patrick says..

dude

people should just be who they are

and not worry about stereotypes

for the realz

..which I am afraid is a bit silly. “Who they are” is imaginary. Our self is not determined in the womb, it is a culmination of our upbringing and interactions with society. We do have free will to determine who we become (as inferred by “interactions with society.”) Part of this interaction involves stereotypes — either learning from them in attempts to defeat them, or adhering to and propagating them.

There’s a part of me that’s always thinking that the bisexuals are getting the joys of homo transgression while reaping the benefits of hetero assimilation.

Please.

Homosexuals who aren’t absolute “I-like-it-like-a-latte-but-noooot-quite-there-yet” fags can enjoy homosexual transgression while fitting in with the assumed heterosexuals around him. You don’t need to be bisexual to not conform to the homosexual stereotypes.

And from the comments of that post:

My own experience echoes yours. I’ve long felt I would “get” bisexuality if I met bi guys who were in relationships with other guys and having sex with women on the side, instead of always the other way around.

Intellectually bisexuality makes sense, Kinsey scale and all that. In practice, it seems more live a closet tactic.

Intellectually it makes sense because even in nature, sexuality is not binary. We are not all either “gay” or “straight” — in fact, few of us statistically-speaking would precisely fit those labels. Labels. Our intense desire to label those people and things around us — to put them into easily understandable boxes and categories — is what drives so much misunderstanding regarding sexuality.

Mr. Bugg decries bisexuality because those who he performed oral sex on went back to their girlfriends and made fag jokes. How does that make bisexuality in any way less substantial? One can experience many things sexually and yet not tailor their lives to revolve around it. While the labels of “gay” and “straight” imply a lack of sexual attraction (and thus interaction) with the other gender, bisexuality is a very grey space in which you would be foolish to require equal-time or deny the comfort of a relationship with either gender.

Certainly some bisexuals like women more but occasionally have varying degrees of sexual interaction with men. Just as certainly, some bisexuals are much more into men but don’t deny some level of attraction or interaction with women. Just because few people have heard of a bisexual man who is in a steady relationship with another man but occasionally sleeps with women doesn’t mean that bisexuality is a figment of our collective imagination, it just suggests that perhaps the average straight woman offers something different than the average gay man. Agreed, one of the things that she offers is social acceptance, but I am wary to boil it down solely to that.

It is more important than love, security, equality, or health. It also is a prerequisite for all of those things. Until taste absolute freedom you cannot truly feel love in an objective fashion. The blissful experiences some feel out in nature, unattached from everything else, is as close as we can get. Without freedom, security and health are meaningless. A caged bird does not live for itself, but for its owner. Its security is incomprehensible to it, or to us who sacrifice our freedom for security. As for equality, the only way any of us will be equal to another is for us both to have absolute freedom to determine our future. The outcome may not be the same, but our opportunities will be equal.

It is alternatively sad and infuriating to see freedom given and taken away so hastily. From former small-government conservatives brainwashed into accepting the sacrifice of others freedom for their own security, to bleeding-heart Robin Hoods “stealing from the rich to give to the poor,” stealing from others for what they perceive to be a good cause.

No cause, no matter how noble it may seem, is worth sacrificing freedom for it. Someone who respects freedom would never steal from one man to feed another. He would never force one man into military service to protect the state, regardless of the cause. If the cause for war cannot sustain itself by the choice of those who are able to enroll in service, the war should not be fought. If military victory requires forced enlistment in order to prevail, the battle is already lost.

If a charity cannot survive on a free and open market of ideas, it should not continue to exist — it should not, then, exist solely because of government-sponsored Robin Hoodery™. Relief of suffering is an easy sell — there is no reason why a charity cannot market itself to consumers-turned-contributors just as a set of encyclopedias was years ago. In this great information age — when dark horse candidates can raise multi-millions in a single day — a well run charitable organization can survive, even thrive, without taking freedom-stained blood money. Propping up inefficient organizations with involuntarily acquired funds (read: taxes) is reprehensible and provides no incentive for positive change within the organization.

Each organization — along with each person within it and, sadly, a majority of Americans — will do the bare minimum in order to maintain the status quo. This is unhealthy, as maintaining the status quo leads to stagnation of thoughts and ideas — of innovation. Each person and each organization must feel the sting of imminent defeat/failure so that it can recognize what it must work to avoid. If a child never experiences pain or loss, how can it have any perspective of success or failure? You must let it touch the hot stove once so that it can learn from its mistake and become a more informed and prepared individual. The same principle applies to all people and all organizations. Corporate bail-outs do nothing to teach other than the lesson that no matter how badly you fuck up the government will help you out — as long as you continue to contribute to a few dozen politicians’ campaigns. These safety nets become hammocks, and once they are reclining in one, it is difficult to dump someone out.

..and that’s fine.

The relative pointlessness of our existence is a reality. We cannot alter reality. Instead, in order to live fulfilling lives — for the relative fraction of a nanosecond we do exist — we must learn what it is that makes us happy as individuals and strive towards that end. Barring physiological limitations, each person has something which makes them happy and for which they wake up in the morning.

An easy answer for many is family and friends. While that could be considered noble, to place your self-worth entirely in the hands of others is potentially dangerous. Not everything we aspire to must be easily accomplished, so don’t take a shortcut in an attempt to reach enlightenment (sotospeak) at the risk of being torn down (intentionally or not) by the others you rely so heavily upon.

Reality is important, but our perception of reality is upon which we base our existences. To turn the power of perception over to others (cough, religion, cough) we surrender our wills, and our lives to those others. That is not noble. It is stupid, lazy, (at best) misguided.