Friday, September 7, 2012

Note to Libertarians, Consider Closely the Median Voter

In a democratic or pseudo-democratic system, you will NEVER get more freedom than the median voter desires.  Perhaps demand, in the economic sense of the word is a better fit than desires, in the sense of being willing to be at least slightly inconvenienced to obtain or enjoy it.
It is, of course, very easy to obtain LESS freedom than the median voter's desires.  The proof is an exercise of simply looking around you.
Because of this, libertarians would be wise to consider carefully just WHO they are advocating, either explicitly or as a foreseeable impact of the policies that they favor to fill the roll of said median voter.  Low church libertarians are far more sensible in this regard.  National boundaries aren't just lines on a map, they also partition different populations with not simply different distributions of abilities and capabilities, but also differences in distribution of desires for various sorts of freedoms.  You've been flying cover for the plutocrat wing of the Republican party for at least a couple of decades now in its hunger for cheaper labor.  How's that working out for you?

How many of your opinions could cost you your job now, if they were freely spoken, versus, say, back in the 1980s?
The fact of the matter is you'd be far better to consider freedom as a direction, rather than as a tangible destination.  You'll find that many of the freedoms you advocate are in practice antithetical to each other, like trying to absorb calcium and iron at the same meal.
Libertarianism, of the low church and ESPECIALLY the high church variety is an almost exclusively Anglo and to a lesser extent, Germanic thing.  The proof of this is available by simply opening your eyes and looking around at any gathering of such.  It has pretty much no traction among the bulk of illegal, or for that matter, legal immigrants in the US presently.  The least damaging thing you could do for your prospects is to call for a complete moratorium on net immigration of all sorts for at least a generation.
You probably ought to have opposed female suffrage too, but that ship had largely sailed before the notion of libertarianism had any currency at all.

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