185 Comments

• 1. Fizban  |  July 31st, 2012 at 8:59 am

  Long time lurker, first time commenter. Loved the post, as I have always had this idea in the back of my mind about libertarianism. Glad to read something which articulates that which has been previously amorphous. The mind-fog lifts, but the world remains unclear. Perhaps in time, that may change as well.

• 2. Al  |  July 31st, 2012 at 9:12 am

  Most libertarians I know are conservative fucktards.

  Ie, “I think gays should be allowed to marry, and that all Americans should own and operate AK-47s and that rich people’s taxes need to be cut even lower and that we should eliminate all environmental laws.”

  Sprinkle in a few socially liberal policies, then worship at the financial altar of Reaganomics.

  It really is like an annoying form of political hipsterism. The South Park Guys (who pioneered “don’t give a fuck about politics) are bigtime libertarians. Now that libertarianism is getting mainstream, they’ll probably call themselves something else new that “nobody else is doing.”

• 3. Cor  |  July 31st, 2012 at 9:23 am

  Good luck selling the libtard cultists on the idea that an employer can be tyrannical. They actually like that. I think it’s half because they imagine they’ll be rich someday, and half for the masochistic (stupid) thrill of arguing for a policy that will inflict hellacious harm to nearly everyone.
  See what hard-bitten realists they are? They want to toss everyone into the economic shark pit! They must have access to a REALLY SOPHISTICATED worldview; they aren’t the socio-economic equivalent of spina bifida, they’re REVOLUTIONARIES with a punk attitude! Who vote for Mormons! Take THAT! establishment! We’re cutting your fuckin’ taxes whether you like it or not! W00+!

• 4. Cor  |  July 31st, 2012 at 9:26 am

  That’s “economic shark TANK,” of course. I got carried away there. Sorry.

• 5. thor  |  July 31st, 2012 at 9:26 am

  Libertarian ‘thinkers’ are the newest iteration of the classic American slave-driver. That they’ve moved onto using words instead of whips and chains takes nothing away from the effect or the intent. They should be hung for their crimes.

• 6. Anarchy Pony  |  July 31st, 2012 at 9:31 am

  For a truly in depth analysis of Right Libertarianism, go here: http://www.infoshop.org/page/AnarchistFAQSectionF Be warned though, it’s a bit of a read.

• 7. gander  |  July 31st, 2012 at 9:34 am

  I liked libertarianism before it got big and sold out (circa-19th century, when it meant fuckin’ anarchism (proper anarchism))

• 8. Ayn R.  |  July 31st, 2012 at 9:35 am

  They keep trying to dig up my corpse and fuck me, but I still think those loopy Libertarians are uncouth. And that freak and very unReasonable editor who wears the adolescent leather jacket everywhere he spews his Sullum…blech! Why don’t they go hand out cigarettes to children in the middle of traffic and leave my Nathan alone?

• 9. Mason C  |  July 31st, 2012 at 9:51 am

  Line of the Day: “Their whole ideology is like a big game of Dungeons & Dragons.”

  I never got libertarians as hip. It’s more like willing ignorance with some lawyering thrown in. And right-wing foundation money.

• 10. Marx D. Spot  |  July 31st, 2012 at 10:18 am

  Corey Robin–an excellent writer whose book the Reactionary Mind should be required reading for anyone interested in these issues–wrote a fantastic piece on workplace tyranny (with some co-authors):

  http://crookedtimber.org/2012/07/01/let-it-bleed-libertarianism-and-the-workplace/

  The responses from the libertarian ‘intellegentsia’ have been rather underwhelming. Tepid apologia delivered with a grating smirk (e.g., http://coreyrobin.com/2012/07/13/wow-tyler-cowen-how-much-paper-do-they-steal-at-gmu-and-other-responses-to-the-libertarians/).

• 11. drugstoreblonde  |  July 31st, 2012 at 10:34 am

  Connor Kilpatrick kills it again.

  Boffo.

• 12. Rob Warmowski  |  July 31st, 2012 at 11:00 am

  Or, The Jacket is but The Bow Tie with lanolin moisturizer.

• 13. CTD  |  July 31st, 2012 at 11:05 am

  Oh yes, the free market is so terrible. Obama’s support for bailing out Goldman Sachs and subsidies for Solyndra and Terry McAuliffe’s car company – way better!

• 14. Ozinator  |  July 31st, 2012 at 11:11 am

  Great article!

  The anti-war shit isn’t based in morality but in an “unseen hand” sort of way. That’s the only way these Republican voters could get sold on it because they love the killing of brown people. I love when they call themselves Constitutionalists too!

  They may be able to hide their fangs wile they talk about ending wars and protecting a constitution but if you get suckered into going to their barbecue, after the third beer they’ll toss you a gun and say it’s time to go kill some Mexicans.

• 15. Howard Bannister  |  July 31st, 2012 at 11:43 am

  When I was a youngster, I was a wingnut. Hard-right, all the way.

  I called myself a libertarian.

  You have every detail perfectly right. Bravo, sir.

• 16. Texans4Freedom  |  July 31st, 2012 at 12:02 pm

  Libertarianism isn’t some cutting-edge political philosophy that somehow transcends the traditional “left to right” spectrum. It’s a radical, hard-right economic doctrine promoted by wealthy people who always end up backing Republican candidates, no matter how often they talk about civil liberties, ending the wars and legalizing pot. Funny how that works.

  —————————————–

  Funny how journalism works on the brains of libertard commenters. It hurts!
  I read Mark Ames and my brain hurts. I read an article from Connor Kilpatrick and my brain hurts cuz that’s two articles, which is too much for me …Mark Ames!!! wooooo!! I know cicle-jerking??? yes, I wrote “cicle-jerking” because well I have school vouchers and home schooling to thank for that!!! let’s all get in a cicle everyone!

• 17. True Progressive  |  July 31st, 2012 at 12:04 pm

  “Libertarianism isn’t some cutting-edge political philosophy that somehow transcends the traditional “left to right” spectrum. It’s a radical, hard-right economic doctrine promoted by wealthy people who always end up backing Republican candidates, no matter how often they talk about civil liberties, ending the wars and legalizing pot.”

  Wow! How true, how true. I saw this guy on Bill Mahar and have to admit, wasn’t impressed. But this blog’s hit the bulls eye. Libertarians are just radical right wingers who lack the integrity to admit to that, so they call themselves “libertarians;” fascists with enough of a wisp of consciousness to understand that’s not a good thing. So they change their name, and, in their minds, it makes it all right.

  Thanks for the blog. Really enjoyed it.

• 18. crazy_inventor  |  July 31st, 2012 at 12:09 pm

  I got to see a ‘libertarian’ up close when I stumbled upon a website he just started called war on you.

  He started this site because he had been censored, and so his number one concern, was ensuring no censorship.

  But something wasn’t right, I kept seeing other new members posting wing nut, and global warming denial crap, and so on, but when I would post FACTS to refute them, he was favoring them, instead of facts.

  So, I did some digging, and found out he was trolling everywhere – from stormfront to indymedia, to drive traffic to his site, which is loaded to the gills with banner ads BTW.

  He was also running a little scam on the side where he pretended to be down with black hip-hop artists, while also simultaneously bedding down with white supremacists. (by bedding down I mean thousands of posts over years on several neo-nazi sites)

  I quickly realized the site was really ‘war on your money’

  So, to prove I was dealing with a white sheet wearing conservative in disguise, I posted a picture that was pseudo sexual – a pic of a man who had his genitalia surgically removed, the pic only showed an area of bare skin, in the spot where genitals should be.

  He and his wingnut friends lost it, and he immediately pulled the pic, on his ‘non-censorship’ site.

  Sex is an excellent test to flush out wingnuts, because they love war but hate sex.

  – keep in mind that the pic didn’t even show anything – just a patch of bare skin 😉

  This above article nails these phonies, from what I saw.

  Libertarians don’t have any real values, it’s just an empty label that weasels and fakers use to hide behind. And who’s usually hiding, are wingnuts, desperate to appear acceptable in mixed company.

  These days being a wingnut has a certain stigma attached to it, so libertarianism is a way to remain a wingnut, without being blatantly obvious about it.

• 19. vortexgods  |  July 31st, 2012 at 12:18 pm

  My experience of libertarians is that they are mostly sheltered youngsters from Republican homes, who like sex, drugs and rock and roll. They’ve never been mugged by a bank (“A socialist is a conservative who has been mugged by a bank.”). They have no clue about economics. They are likely still in college, so if their crummy summer jobs really suck they can just walk away with less money for video games or whatever.

  Being a libertarian is a way to rebel against Mom and Dad who:

  1. Could care less if their kids ever have enjoyable sex. (As long as they get grandchildren.)

  2. Would be horrified if their kids tried any illegal drugs, and would probably like to raise the drinking and smoking age to around 30.

  3. Think the music their kids like is worthless noise that’s full of bad ideas.

  Mom and Dad are the worst “tyrants” they’ve ever encountered. They don’t get the whole… “I have to carefully arrange things so that I’m never in the stock-taking area at the back of the store alone with my boss or he’ll put his hand up my skirt and try to finger fuck me and I can’t get away and when someone finally does come in after time has stretched out to a thousand aeons it’s I who will be hot and red with shame and he who will laugh and wink and even joke about how I can’t stay away from him,” because it hasn’t happened to them or their girlfriends… yet.

• 20. Anarchy Pony  |  July 31st, 2012 at 12:22 pm

  Wow 16 and 13 sure are paragons of reason and intelligence.

• 21. Galtic Warrior  |  July 31st, 2012 at 12:40 pm

  Mark Ames, yet again you show your facistic colors. You never chose to be apologetic for the slaughter of so many innocent people by private corporations, and therefore I call you out as a fascist, since if you don’t say “I blame th’ guvm’n’t” then clearly you are a fascist. It isn’t the guv’men’t, it’s the tobacco companies that kill six million people a year worldwide! It was the bankers who loaned Britain all that money for World War One, and all the war profiteers like DuPont, who pushed the USA into World War One! No wait—no, guvmints exist totally separate from corporate power, in fact they so scare and terrify bankers and corporations, the guv’mnt is like this separate monster like thing that totally goes “rrraaarrrr!” and makes scary noises and forces people to go to wars. See, if it was just corporations, then we’d only have to worry about all the millions they kill every year through pollution, all the millions worldwide killed by tobacco and alcohol multinationals, all the millions impoverished by bankers—and sure okay private contractors would probably kill lots of people, but still, would they go “RRRAAAHHHRRR! I AM THE GUV’MINT! RRRAAHHGGHRRR!” no I don’t think they would. I hear the guv’mnt scaring me at night with that scream. I only comfort myself with my Koch Industries dolls, who protect me.

  How many people have corporations killed in the past 100 years? Anyone ever heard of the East India Company?

  Okay now compare that to the TSA! Yeah, the TSA has killed WAY WAY more people, like bazillions more!

  Who’s killed more? I’ll give you a hint, I dream of rimming Mr. Walton.

• 22. F L  |  July 31st, 2012 at 1:56 pm

  Why do we need Jacobin mag when we already have The Nation to root for the most Kucinichy Dem we might be able to get?

• 23. yandat  |  July 31st, 2012 at 2:51 pm

  Jacobin is not The Nation. Though I’ll agree it’s mostly circle jerking until there’s an actual organized socialist left-movement. Writing is important but no one is willing to pick an organization or actually commit. People walk away from this wondering “what can I do” – when the answer should be “well since you asked, we’re organizing the working class right now into a socialist labor movement that intends to grab political power” instead of “well, geez, complain about it on the internet, maybe vote Green??”

  We need Occupy with a heavy dose of populist socialism. There’s a need to shut out the fucking hippie lunatic crowd and take ourselves as seriously as the Capitalist class does.

• 24. Doug  |  July 31st, 2012 at 3:15 pm

  “A strong welfare state would give us the power to say Fuck You to our bosses—this is the power to say ‘I’m gonna work odd jobs for twenty hours a week while I work on my driftwood sculptures and play keyboards in my chillwave band. And I’ll still be able to go to the doctor and make rent.’”

  I’m just to the right of Genghis Khan, I’ll take it in the mouth from Gunnar Strang any day of the week. The point of the welfare state (whether you agree with it or not) is to care for the elderly, infirm, disabled, widowed and orphaned—and this isn’t just me who thinks it, it’s Friedrich von Hayek too, so that pretty much covers the entire spectrum of thought. Me, I’m a slave type, so the only thing that offends me is the idea of not slaving away for a master. I hate people who want a state-sponsored free-ride (not that I hate bankers or anything, I guess I just mean people from my self-hating libertard ghetto shouldn’t get a free ride). By talking this pseudo-hard-boiled take-it-like-a-man talk, I’m assuming that a billionaire will notice that I speak their language, and say to me, “Hey, you, the guy in the comments section! You know, I could really use a guy like you. We could maybe drink a beer together and talk about what naive children those 99%ers are who think they can get a free ride. Now, get down on your fucking knees and shine my boots with your tongue.” And I naturally would say, “Yeth Mathter, your bootth tathte tho royally delithuth!”

  Take it from somebody with some real world experience in bootlicking. Look around you, yeah, betcha you too have posters of Charles Koch all over your wall too, betcha yours have those same yellowish stains that mine have. My insignificance is made meaningful when I fantasize about the cumulative product of billions of very highly fucking stressed out human beings. The vast majority of whom had a fucking pain-in-the-ass boss breathing down their neck. Ooo, mmmm, yes, just knowing that I know that it’s happening, and that I can face this alleged “harsh reality” while imagining that I’m one of the few who can face it, is enough to make me want to get back on my knees and lick boot.

  Bla bla bla bla bla. Good thing I didn’t waste my time making some longwinded point about how harsh real life is. God I admire how tough I am. You’re not so tough, you crunchy liberal you! Myah! You can’t handle the truth, you know, like in that Tom Cruise movie? Yeah, I imagine that I’m the Jack Nicholson character all the time.

  I wish someone would recognize me. Or at least kill me? AEC, you have been gracious enough to improve me—won’t you please put me down?

• 25. Strelnikov  |  July 31st, 2012 at 3:17 pm

  “We need Occupy with a heavy dose of populist socialism. There’s a need to shut out the fucking hippie lunatic crowd and take ourselves as seriously as the Capitalist class does.”

  I second this….enough with the 9/11 nuts, and people who can somehow both watch Alex Jones and DemocracyNow! while thinking they are both on the same page.

  Occupy is not the Tea Party.

• 26. SmartRothbard  |  July 31st, 2012 at 3:40 pm

  This is a shameful article. It comes off as an angry partisan rant. The author seems to be rabiddly defending the left/right paradigm. Singapore is Libertarian? Come on! Singapore allows very few personal liberties. One thing Libertarians view as an important role of government is to punish fraud, something that neighther left or right seems to be concerned with. Whatever form of government we choose, the same corruption from monied interests is going to take root until we start caring about enforcing the rule of law, especially at the top.

  Yeah, how radical is this? “Rule of law” man, it’s all about “rule of law.” That’s what the IMF and World Bank always tell other countries: You need rule of law to get Western investment and protect their investments. And hey, if the IMF and World Bank are constantly preaching rule-of-law, then you just know that I’m thinking WAY outside the left/right paradigm! Oh, and thank you AEC for reminding me that “rule of law” is a corporate weapon used to colonize weaker countries. Notice how I didn’t say anything about “rights” but instead I focus on “rule of law” which is about protecting property. That’s why I’m a Rothbardian anarcho-capitalist. Stickin it to the Man, man!

• 27. SN  |  July 31st, 2012 at 4:37 pm

  Hey Libertard at comment 13. The choice is not between the adolescent giddy nihilism of libertarian free market uber alles and Obama style actually existing neoliberal plutocracy. Go look up bifurcation in a dictionary – Fuckwit. Then go to a public library and read about and the countries that score in the top 10 for low levels of income equality, high levels of merit based social mobility, quality of education,and quality of heath care. A baseline of economic equality of condition is a prerequisite for a society that rewards hard work, skill and talent. Free markets promote class based nepotism and social democracy promotes meritocracy.

• 28. Hey  |  July 31st, 2012 at 4:39 pm

  lol yea having a job is such a bad thing

• 29. zhubajie  |  July 31st, 2012 at 4:55 pm

  Singapore is explicitly a Confucian state, the opposite of Libertarian! Also, it’s a rather small city-state, so that people who want to chew gum, etc., can go whoop it up in Indonesia or Malaysia real easy. Friends tell me that gum stands line the road across the border and that a 45 min. ferry ride will take you to the brothels of the Riau Is., Indonesia.

  As for “Ron Paul’s economic advisor … claiming that Communist Party-ruled China has a freer market than the U.S.,” HA, HA, HA! The CPC is about as Communist as the GOP! Real Commies don’t invite businessmen and entrepreneurs to join. Jiang Zemin’s “Three Represents” does. It’s just a political machine or maybe a very boring church. Probably RP’s advisor made his claim after an evening of karaoke, booze and whores. That’s what the CPC really believes in!

  Zhu Bajie
  Kunming
  PR China

• 30. Nolan  |  July 31st, 2012 at 5:18 pm

  I take it you never read Jacobin if you think it’s politics are anything like The Nation.

• 31. zhubajie  |  July 31st, 2012 at 5:23 pm

  “Libertarianism isn’t some cutting-edge political philosophy…”

  Under other names, it’s what made the Industrial Revolution so hellish.

• 32. Anarchy Pony  |  July 31st, 2012 at 7:10 pm

  All you right libertardians need to stop being such pussies and actually become real anarchists. Enough of the have my cake and eat it too faux-losophy of an-cap. Be real radicals, that are actually capable of reasoned, deconstruction of a socio-political system.

• 33. Flatulissimo  |  July 31st, 2012 at 8:00 pm

  Great article.

  @23 and 25 – sign me up. When Occupy started it was hard not to think that they didn’t need any agents provocateur to form a black bloc and smash Starbucks windows to discredit things. The drum circle bullshit accomplished that peaceably enough, while assuring the powers that be that there was no real threat.

  Remember the silent protest at UC Davis?

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmfIuKelOt4

  Now that took some discipline, and you could tell that had the powers that be a little weirded out. Made them UNCOMFORTABLE. You could feel an undercurrent of power and menace emanating from the crowd. I guess that’s why it was barely mentioned in the media and the tactic was pointedly ignored at any other protests. Like it never happened.

  Give me a group that did stuff like that rather than the hippie granola drum circle b.s., and that was serious as a heart attack, and I wouldn’t be embarrassed to be associated with it. I suspect there are more like me out there.

• 34. Tyler Cowen  |  July 31st, 2012 at 8:03 pm

  Libertarians’ few successes come from suckering in people who got seatbelt fines years ago and are still pissed about it. That’s really the extent of their appeal to most folks.

• 35. Jedi Mind Trick  |  July 31st, 2012 at 8:42 pm

  What the fuck is a “jacobian”?

• 36. helplesscase  |  July 31st, 2012 at 8:52 pm

  “Yeah, they’re just D&D nerds. The cool kids are Social Democrats.”

• 37. ?  |  July 31st, 2012 at 9:04 pm

  There are no libertarians in any position of power in the US anyway. We only have authoritarians and social conservatives.

• 38. Miucha  |  July 31st, 2012 at 9:54 pm

  “And most people are dumb.” Your words, your judgement.
  I wish you had a better argument for such a long text (really long, like really, really long. kn’aw mean? txt me.)
  I am a libertarian in a 35 year long socialist nanny state which, guess what?, is bankrupted. Why? Because my nanny gave all her pension money to nice job creators.
  I thought you would be glad to know that the constitution of my country has the word socialism in it, pointed as a goal, an objective to be reached. That is why my socialist nanny gave money to job creators. And I will too. I count on your immense generosity and shame and donate to me and my fellow countrymen and women so we can pursue the glory of the nanny state. (That’s a ‘tard inside joke. Never mind.) We are the proud pawns a socialist state but alas we need more money! Thank you for donnating! (Another ‘tard inside joke.)

• 39. National Socialist Theoretician  |  July 31st, 2012 at 9:58 pm

  My Bolshevik friends: please do not compare this vile shopkeeper’s ideology of “Libertarianism” with our glorious revolutionary ideology of Volk, Reich and Fuehrer. These Libertarian fools know nothing of true liberty, which is the freedom to live among one’s Volk and march as one people to a glorious destiny under the Fuehrer’s divine command. National Socialism is a universal ideology rooted in blood and soil, not love of money or free markets. National Socialism can be applied anywhere there is a strong Volk consciousness, from Germany to Israel to China to Arabia. National Socialism can never be corrupted, and it can only be defeated in war. National Socialism simply works; Libertarianism, Social Democracy, Anarchism, Marxism and all other ideologies are proven failures which lead inevitably to ruin.

• 40. Anarcho-Syndicalist  |  July 31st, 2012 at 10:04 pm

  “Libertarians”

  http://anarchism.pageabode.com/afaq/150-years-of-libertarian

• 41. COKESON  |  July 31st, 2012 at 10:31 pm

  Really fantastic, as always. Some lines in here were very Amesy, too.

  Anyway, how much do we have to pay to lure back oonklay Dolan and get that Limonov article you teased us with? 😛

• 42. S  |  July 31st, 2012 at 10:42 pm

  Love the killer photo of libertarian douche, Nick Gillespie and his silly leather jacket and Tom Snyder haircut. He looks like the president of the Arthur Fonzarelli fan club.

• 43. Ashley Hutsell  |  July 31st, 2012 at 11:11 pm

  Seriously what is it with libertarians and leather jackets? Also having Penn Jillete among your ranks should be an immediate red flag for the unworthiness of your ideology.

• 44. harry  |  July 31st, 2012 at 11:46 pm

  Libertarians are a myth. You’ll only find them in silly courses regarding political philosophy, where one might encounter Robert Nozick’s Anarchy, State, and Utopia. But I think that Nozick rejected libertarianism later in his life. Can anyone confirm this?

• 45. Dimitri Ratz  |  July 31st, 2012 at 11:47 pm

  @ 18, Libertarianism is a religion, sort of like Satanism, only real. “A casual stroll through a lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything” Nietzsche

• 46. Mike  |  August 1st, 2012 at 1:07 am

  36: Bernstein and Sweden may have made social democracy seem boring and cold, but it was the idea Lenin and Bakunin both though would be the basis of a massive social revolution.

  Since Kilpatrick acknowledges that our constitution and union busting plutocrats prevent any potential for electoral social democracy, he must implicitly be endorsing a rebirth of militant “fight back in the class war” social democracy.

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Social_Democratic_Labour_Party

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Alliance_of_Socialist_Democracy

• 47. Mike  |  August 1st, 2012 at 1:07 am

  *thought

• 48. DonnaFaye  |  August 1st, 2012 at 2:02 am

  I encounter a very large number of libertarian men who are anti-choice while being liberal on all other personal freedom issues. Apparently the itty bitty snowflake “human life” in my uterus trumps my right to personal autonomy. Which goes to show they think women are subhumans who don’t deserve equal rights with men and definitely don’t get to refuse a man’s sacred seed.

• 49. EJD90  |  August 1st, 2012 at 2:07 am

  I used to be a libertarian. Then, I realized I love freedom too much to support capitalism.

  There’s nothing liberatory about bosses controlling your life, investors getting most of the product of your labor because they own the machines (because they had the money to buy them!), and a class-based oligarchy controlling your government and robbing from you your share of the decision-making power you ought to have in your community over the community’s affairs. There is no human dignity, autonomy, or self-ownership in commodifying and objectifying human human lives to be bought and sold piecemeal to the upper class. There’s no respect for rights or freedom from attack and harm, when anyone can set up a factory and dump their sludge into the river and their smoke into the sky, or destroy the common resources. The wage labor system, destruction of the common environment, and political plutocracy of capitalism is inimical to freedom. Under the rule of capital, freedom and property have been effectively abolished for most people- self-ownership has given way to exploitation and the dictatorship of the boss.

  Dump so-called libertarianism, which is actually capitalism. The first philosophy to call itself libertarianism was anti-capitalist anarchism. Look to libertarian socialism, anarcho-syndicalism, social anarchism, participism, and socialism from below, if you want meaningful freedom.

• 50. Punjabi From Karachi  |  August 1st, 2012 at 2:25 am

  😀

• 51. Punjabi From Karachi  |  August 1st, 2012 at 2:29 am

  It was all Yawn until:

  “I’m gonna work odd jobs for twenty hours a week while I work on my driftwood sculptures and play keyboards in my chillwave band. And I’ll still be able to go to the doctor and make rent.”

  Sounds like freedom to me.

  😉

  Aww Yeah

• 52. Zog  |  August 1st, 2012 at 3:53 am

  Fantastic piece Connor. I’m bookmarking it for link posting as the need arises.

• 53. Robert Rich  |  August 1st, 2012 at 4:31 am

  Thanks for the article. Interesting this pops up the week after a Libertarian analysis of favorable teen attitudes.

  Unfortunately, it correctly confuses Libertarian with extreme conservative ideas and even misquotes Von Mises to make him look pro-Nazi, and repeats many things that simply aren’t true. Similarly, hard-right journals try and make Libertarians look pro-Communist or try and look like Libertarians while rejecting key elements such as its rejection of the coercive and religious state, advocacy of comprehensive non-coercive public programs, and anti-militarist approach. Totally, hard right and libertarians don’t agree. Look at Ron Paul. Jeez. He’s a hard right communist for chrissakes!

  Libertarians seek to legalize the voluntary, and specifically support Communist, socialist and other communities so long as voluntary–and work for a leisure society where most of the concerns raised will be irrelevant. For info on people using voluntary Libertarian tools on similar and other issues, please see the non-partisan ATTN ALL BOTTOM BAGGERS: THIS HERE IS PRIVATE PROPERTY OF THE AEC, DON’T BE TERSSPASSIN’ WITH YOUR BAGTARD LINK SPAM. Libertarian International Organization You get the meaning of “private” and “property” do ya?

• 54. zhubajie  |  August 1st, 2012 at 6:04 am

  Huben’s”Critiques of Libertarianism” web page has been around for a few years, but is still good, esp. the sub-section on humor!

  http://world.std.com/~mhuben/libindex.html

• 55. G.G. Allin  |  August 1st, 2012 at 6:07 am

  That Nick Gillespie wears the faggiest leather jacket I’ve ever seen. He looks like a 40 year old dad from the 1980’s trying to look cool as he takes his kids to an R.E.O. Speedwagon concert.

• 56. zhubajie  |  August 1st, 2012 at 6:14 am

  “Libertarians are a myth. You’ll only find them in silly courses regarding political philosophy…”

  I’ve mostly encountered them ranting on the Internet, sounding like 2-year olds throwing tantrums because they’re not allowed to steal candy.

• 57. BM  |  August 1st, 2012 at 7:01 am

  I can’t tell what’s funnier, the story or the comments. On the morning I wake up to find Gore Vidal has died, nothing takes the edge off that news better than reading sophomoric drivel from a site that only recently managed to scrape up enough money to buy a .com domain. (I’d forgotten all about this site, as my firewall was reflexively blocking sites selling pen1s pumps and cheap c1ali5.) The only disappointment here is that the entire site isn’t rendered in Comic Sans, but fortunately I have a browser plugin for that. A++

  The AEC preserves this comment in its original form to document an example of what many in the bagtard community would call a “killer flaming, dude!”

• 58. Jay  |  August 1st, 2012 at 7:02 am

  I’m inclined to forgive libertarians between the ages of about 15 and 25, maybe 30. At those ages, it’s natural to focus on achieving independence, and libertarianism appeals to that. It’s a stage.

  Beyond 30, I start expecting people to have some understanding of the ways people depend on one another, naturally and unavoidably, and of the limits of their own ability to change their circumstances, hard work notwithstanding.

• 59. Go 4+ Party System  |  August 1st, 2012 at 7:03 am

  Oooo…sorry, I think there is misunderstanding and suspicion of anyone who leans towards libertarian views or any alternative view from our two party system (secretly the one party system, the corporatist party). When you have a country where the vast majority of Democratic and the Republican politicians wish to continue supporting the military-industrial complex (40-50 cents out of every tax dollar btw), have no intelligent discussion of how to re-engineer healthcare, and do not wish to re-regulate Wall Street (does anyone remember that 99.99% of our politicians supported complete deregulation of the financial markets), some of us are looking for alternative parties and candidates. The fact that a fringe GOP politician like Ron Paul and a fringe Democrat like Dennis Kucinich can agree on many issues that I support suggest that there is a common ground out there to build a foundation. Third, fourth, and fifth parties candidates should be encouraged. The Green Party, for example, is trying to get Green party and Libertarian party representation for the presidential debates. They think it would be helpful for the public to hear how the 4 parties truly differ. Unfortunately, there is too much suspicion in this country for anything but our tried and true two party system. Even my dad, a far left leftie who actually met Fidel Castro and Che during the late 50’s, believes that the Green Party is funded by the GOP in order to syphon votes from the Democrats. There is probably some truth to this, since we know for a fact that various Tea Party candidates were funded by Democrats to syphon votes from GOP candidates.

  This message was paid for by the Libertarian Association of East Texas. We approve of this message.
  

• 60. Flatulissimo  |  August 1st, 2012 at 7:15 am

  @48 – I thought Eileen Jones was the only woman who read the eXiled.

  Watch for people to claim that you are actually John Dolan soon.

• 61. James Holcom  |  August 1st, 2012 at 7:27 am

  The bagocrisy in this comment is hysterical. I claim that you blame libertarians for backing republicans who fail to adopt their doctrine while progressives back democrats who fail to adopt their doctrine. I would love to change the left-right paradigm to a progressive-libertarian conversation, but you don’t have to be a self-righteous asshole.

• 62. Trevor  |  August 1st, 2012 at 7:37 am

  It really can’t be said enough that libertarians are fucking morons. No, there’s nothing deeper to their philosophy because there’s no philosophy in the first place, just an idiot child’s desires given free reign.

  And for a bunch who make so much noise about supporting market economies, they know fuck-all about economics of any sort. Honest to god, I actually heard one say “If there were no government, my money would be worth more!” That’s just Darwin Award dumb.

• 63. Kennedy the Sad DJ  |  August 1st, 2012 at 8:07 am

  Libertarianism get me gig on Bill Maher and let me show my thin male-esque body and pancake titz to the unrich messes. Libertarianism so good and me so cool and Nick so hott I cream my aged jeans.

• 64. CTD  |  August 1st, 2012 at 9:17 am

  SN,

  It is pretty obvious that ‘social democracy’ winds up promoting cronyism. There is the source of your inequality. If we remove the goverment’s power to take a sixth of workers’ income give nice big checks to the Goldman Sachs, the GE’s, and the Raytheons of the world, you will see a lot less inequality. The regulations of social democracy controlled by corporate interests wind up being barriers to entry, which large corporations LURVE.

  And in free-markets there is no corruptions or cronyism or barriers to entry because they’re “free” markets. Free, you get it? Free?

• 65. shaolinmonkey  |  August 1st, 2012 at 9:42 am

  @48

  What I don’t get about self-satisfied “pro-choicers” is that they argue that a woman has a “right to do with her body as she sees fit”, but then they tend to get all up in arms when a pregnant woman smokes or does drugs. Hey, it’s her body, amirite?

  (Not that it matters, but I’m technically “pro-choice” although abortion always seemed like a very unclassy thing to do under most circumstances. Now, if you were to say that Rex Von Hayek supported abortions, I’d probably change unclassy to totally classy-i-cal liberty dude! )

• 66. radii  |  August 1st, 2012 at 10:51 am

  Libertarianism is such a fraud – basically it is conservatives with a sprinkling of theory who revel in being assholes … they don’t care about the suffering of others and belive in a fantasy about the heroic individual … they seem to forget that you don’t get to re-set the world to zero and start over … the enmeshed corruption that exist negates their theory: there are no free markets and merit is rarely rewarded for the markets are rigged by the plutocrats and connections count for much more than hard work and meritorious service

• 67. Anarcissie  |  August 1st, 2012 at 10:51 am

  think if you’re going to have an anti-libertarian rant, you should at least take libertarians out for a happy meal or something, and not make them feel bad about themselves. After all, if they have no power (and they don’t) only their words matter, but if their words don’t matter…well, the only thing that can help is, you guessed it, a HAPPY MEAL! Libertarianism is simply liberalism taken literally. It’s full of contradictions and absurdities because liberalism, including progressive liberalism, is full of contradictions and absurdities. If I may quote HAPPY MEAL for an example: ‘The progressive’s great plan: “Corporations control the government, so let’s fix that by making the government more powerful.”’ I’m afraid one could go on at great length; perhaps you can do it for yourselves.

  Libertarians have sensed that there are serious defects in liberal capitalism as we know it, and their first reaction is to go back to the old primitive creed. They need to be helped along to further enlightenment, not derided without acces to Happy Meals.

• 68. GuitarBill  |  August 1st, 2012 at 11:37 am

  Connor Kilpatrick wrote, “Republicans freak you out but think the Democrats are wimps? You must be a libertarian!”

  Not in every case, Connor. For example, I despise Republicans (ie., fascists), Democrats (ie., fascists) and Baggertarians (ie., fascists). I guess that makes me an equal opportunity hater.

• 69. CTD  |  August 1st, 2012 at 1:02 pm

  >And in free-markets there is no corruptions or cronyism or barriers to entry because they’re “free” markets. Free, you get it? Free?

  Some snarky mod added this part, but it’s mostly true. Certainly more true than the dopey statement in the article about worrying about deficits. Greece: ‘Oh, I guess we’re wrong to worry about deficits. Thanks Exile!’

• 70. RanDomino  |  August 1st, 2012 at 2:30 pm

  Everything you need to know about Libertarianism: Praxeology explicitly rejects the scientific method in favor of theories being declared correct even if events explicitly contradict them. TLDR: It’s a dolled-up version of “I CAN’T HEAR YOU LALALALALA”.

• 71. DrunktankDan  |  August 1st, 2012 at 3:19 pm

  + 1000 Points to ConKil.
  I was arguing with a bunch of libertards over at vice about this just last week. I think I saw the link to the article in the KNOW column originally. I made the mistake of using my actual facebook account to argue with those idiots and now my inbox is blow’n up with people agreeing and the occasional troll. Funny thing is, all of the trolls are white guys, whereas the rest is a mixed group. Hmmm. . .

  Also, I keep reading number 16 in a Sylvester from looney tunes voice and laughing HARD. The “Mark Ames! Wooooo!” part is my favorite cause it’s so perfectly juvenile that you can picture this Texan asshole fuming at his keyboard thinking “They can’t even attack my argument properly!”. No buddy, they already did that with the article. Now they are just laughing at you. We all are.

• 72. z.  |  August 1st, 2012 at 3:26 pm

  What weirds me out about libertarians is how homogeneous this group of dynamic nonconforming individualists is. “Ron Paul kids” is what my friends call them. Everyone here can probably picture one. Its a misanthropic high school clique of a movement.

• 73. Az  |  August 1st, 2012 at 3:33 pm

  Lately I’ve begun to be of the opinion that libertarians are essentially the American equivalent of Russian liberals, except instead of NED, the State Department, and such, they are led by the Koch Vanguard of the Cato Institute, IHS, and other garbage. Particularly because the few Russian liberals I’ve met here in America have identified as libertarian when it comes to American politics.

  The eXile did a nice job looking at ‘human rights groups’ in this respect, and their apparent belief that economic equality is antithetical to human rights and civil liberties. The only difference is that in Russia the liberals are actually opposed to the existing system (at least when it comes to who should be in charge) while here the libertarians are simply part of it.

• 74. super390  |  August 1st, 2012 at 3:43 pm

  Didn’t P. J. O’Rourke completely exhaust the Hip Libertarian act way back when he was writing books like “Republican Party Animal” and before he exposed his true self in “Give War A Chance”? Yep, plenty pro-government when it comes to colonial war to protect the oil companies’ sheikh partners. Because the truth is that capitalism has been kept in place by a sucession of military hegemons.

  The time when capitalism got shakiest and alternatives abounded was when Britain was in decline and the US wasn’t yet ready to expand its empire beyond banana-land. Yet, that’s the very time that anti-war libertarians worship – the last stand of American isolationism.

  So yeah, libertarians, I dare you to dismantle our military-industrial complex. You’ll get to see how billions of people really feel about business without our bayonets propping up their autocrats.

• 75. DBake  |  August 1st, 2012 at 4:50 pm

  @44: Nozick gave up on the hard-core libertarianism of Anarchy State and Utopia and acknowledged that some degree of welfare state was needed. His views remained libertarianish, but he gave up on the whole ‘taxation to help others is theft’ idea.

  It’s worth noting also that AS and U was not ever intended to apply in a simple manner to the real world, but was deliberately supposed to be a Utopia. When you try to apply the thing to the real world you run into the Property Is Theft problem, and he admitted that he couldn’t figure out any reasonable way to solve it, and for all he knew the correct answer might be socialist.

  Nozick was actually intelligent and possessed some degree of intellectual honesty, however.

• 76. SmartRothbard  |  August 1st, 2012 at 5:27 pm

  Want to see what an inside of a bag looks like? Well here it is:

  Not really. The author just seems pissed that libertarianism is gaining a little traction out there, while his hard-core leftism (he describes himself as a Red) is dying out.

  (As a general rule, anybody who cites the crookedtimber piece as a “gotcha” moment doesn’t have a particularly good idea of where libertarians are coming from, and isn’t well-placed to speak to their motivation and thought process,if you want to know more about libertarianism join us at mises.org or read L.W.MISES,NOBEL PRIZE F.A. HAKED,MURRAY ROTHBARD,NOBEL PRIZE MILTON FRIEDMAN AND HIS NEPHEW DAVID FRIEDMAN,ROBERT NOZICK,great economists BRYAN CAPLAN and the guys at econblog,WALTER BLOCK ETC OR DROP OUT YOUR PHILOSOPHY/SOCIOLOGY/LITERATURE/LIBERAL ARTS CLASS AND LEARN SOME FUCKING ECONOMICS)

• 77. BeastFan  |  August 1st, 2012 at 6:17 pm

  @SmartRothbard

  The funny thing about your comment and people who can’t help but skim the article and fly straight down to the comments section to mash their keyboards in anger and frustration…

  … is that Austrian “economics” isn’t economics. It’s not a science, it doesn’t rely on math or proofs or evidence, and it’s based on a “deep understanding of human nature”, which apparently no one told neuroscientists or psychologists about.

• 78. super390  |  August 1st, 2012 at 7:25 pm

  Hey libertards! Romney just praised Israel’s socialized medical system!

  http://www.salon.com/2012/07/30/romneys_israel_healthcare_stunner/

  Mitt: “Do you realize what health care spending is as a percentage of the GDP in Israel? 8 percent… We spend 18 percent of our GDP on health care. 10 percentage points more… We have to find ways, not just to provide health care to more people, but to find ways to finally manage our health care costs.”

  And how does Israel do this, according to the article?

  “Israel regulates its health care system aggressively, requiring all residents to carry insurance and capping revenue for various parts of the country’s health care system. Israel created a national health care system in 1995, largely funded through payroll and general tax revenue. The government provides all citizens with health insurance: They get to pick from one of four competing, nonprofit plans. Those insurance plans have to accept all customers—including people with pre-existing conditions—and provide residents with a broad set of government-mandated benefits.”

  Aieeee! Commies!

  And make sure every damn one of your right-wing friends knows that Romney is a Commie too. They were willing to forgive his Massachusetts sins, but a backslider is damned in the eyes of God.

  Meanwhile, I’m demanding that we get the same healthcare as our holy Israeli “allies”, which is subsidized by our aid money.

• 79. Septeus7  |  August 1st, 2012 at 7:27 pm

  Libertarianism is only about freeing humanity from it’s creative powers of reason however, feeble those powers, they make us human.

  Libertarians are mindless animals ruled by consumer appetites in the “free market” which owned by their masters. It’s the philosophy of bourgeoisie dogs who are happy to be pets of of their masters.

  They hate concept of government because it’s control of society by the mind instead of the arbitrary authority of the propertied elite. The last thing a Libertarian wants is an independent sovereign mind that will not submit to the traditionalist claims of a “right to property” i.e. “rule over the land, people, etc…” and instead claims the right rule oneself as a sovereign that can question the existing order.

  The Libertarian/Anarchist hates the fact humans can think and imagine that they can use their reason to improve their lives by the collective application of discovery of principles by minds that they cannot own, control, or subject to “market rules.”

• 80. DBake  |  August 1st, 2012 at 7:37 pm

  You say that anyone who would cite the Crooked Timber post doesn’t understand libertarianism, and they should read libertarian authors to understand libertarianism instead. But the Crooked Timber piece cites one of the libertarian authors you recommend, and he in fact says what Kilpatrick accuses libertarians of believing. So should people read Hayek to understand what libertarians think or not?

• 81. Dimitri Ratz  |  August 1st, 2012 at 8:13 pm

  @ 67 If you want to give them protein shakes good for you, but I’d be concerned about getting rabies. Such scum sucking low lives that have outer contempt for others’ existance aren’t likely to care enough for themselves in terms of hygiene. They can’t, their phobia about their future in make believe cartoon shaped afterlife is too much, totally debilitated by their radio messengers of god they are better left alone to ferialer in their filth. Just look at McCain. His nails were so putrid and filthy that while at Vietnam they had to take them off just to save his life.

• 82. Peter Thiel  |  August 1st, 2012 at 9:06 pm

  @76

  Yea, those all caps isn’t working for me.

• 83. damn red  |  August 1st, 2012 at 9:52 pm

  @59
  There is a reason math teachers tell kids to show their work.

  In the rare event when a libertarian is correct we are in desperate need to see the steps taken to reach that conclusion, and why more people who vote or support socialists/greens would realize that libertarians are not a reliable or even good political ally. The enemy of my enemy is not my friend. (of course let’s ignore greens since they happen to have some of that libertarian hippy overlap problem)

  I’ve read papers from libertarians that take the premise of the political theory where they run it to the insane logical conclusion then claim it must be right since the premise was flawless. IE children can enter contracts, When a child runs away it violates the child’s rights to bring him home yada yada yada. Let us ignore the creep and ick factor here, even though it would be funny to call libertarians secret pedos. I will be taking the high road here.

  Back to my point.
  But eventually through their premise they come to reliable and good conclusions, think monkeys and typewriters but instead of a novel they write a dirty limerick using their feces and a bathroom stall. And these are low hanging fruits, some subsidies should be cut, end the war on drugs you heard and use these before to sucker morons in. But here is the problem your premise and logic for the political thought behind the ideology is not only horribly flawed but completely opposed to any left leaning ideology and thought just on your one overriding axiom. Talking about your private property rights fetish.

  Now here is what makes libertarians annoying, dangerous and downright dishonest. By actively hiding the logic behind your conclusions you latch onto left leaning movements or potential left leaning groups. You function more as leeches sucking out energy and manpower in hopes of coming up with some credibility and political power.

  And the amusing thing is libertarians have to latch onto other movements since the actual horrible ideological beast that spawned you morons refuses to actually associate with you and much to our frustration responsibility. You hang out with the occupy groups, instead of the actual republican pro “job creators” types for one reason. They despise and think very little of you and your ideology but they have no problem unleashing you onto the political stage for their own purpose. They write praising articles about the youth becoming or being libertarian. Come up with attacks on social security basing it on theft from the youth, blah blah blah, and this is done to attract younger voters that would be more inclined to vote for leftist policies, and your goat spawn elder horror of an ideological parent knows this and uses their half aborted malformed child to great effect for confusing issues and muddying up the political water of their opponents, not to mention it looks like we are associated with you. And once your damage is done they lock you back into the attic away from polite company, but you get your fish heads (Cash donations to Cato and friends. Can’t have you starving we need you to put that happy downs face on capitalism, his hugs might kill but he means well)

  Long story short libertarians are leeches, desperate for approval from their parent figure. In short seek therapy and would you kindly fuck off. You aren’t helping.

• 84. damn red  |  August 1st, 2012 at 10:03 pm

  Oh and to finish up, when I hear a libertarian state they would love if the debate was between social democrats/greens/etc and libertarians, and not the current democrat/republican debate. It’s just some sad attempt to tie their brainless ideology to something more credible in hopes that that some of that credibility rubs off on them.

  The thought of having to constantly debate the libertarian ideology every election cycle makes suicide look reasonable.

• 85. CensusLouie  |  August 1st, 2012 at 10:14 pm

  Whenever I think of Libertarians, I always picture Keanu Reeves’ character in My Own Private Idaho. Some lily white upper middle class twit who loves to pretend they’re progressive and open minded, but will eventually crawl back to embrace the mantle of unquestioned privilege and rigid class structure. I saw it so often when I lived in Williamsburg for a year that I swore some clone factory was spitting them all out. (The only upside to them was the chicks were all genetic offspring of hot trophy wives and didn’t believe in bras)

  Let’s just start calling them “yippies”, the combined worst traits of hippies and yuppies.

• 86. zhubajie  |  August 1st, 2012 at 11:09 pm

  Where is the US equivalent to Pussy Riot? Probably it won’t come from libertarians!

• 87. Julia  |  August 2nd, 2012 at 2:11 am

  Don’t forget the fact that markets as institutions were created by states in order to pay off war debts. Those “barter economies” you read about in ECON 101 (and which Menger, father of the austrian skool, based his theories about money on) never existed, and anthropologists have never found an example of a market economy existing before the state.

• 88. Robert Morris  |  August 2nd, 2012 at 3:11 am

  Adorable. I’m not hurt at all. No seriously, I’m seriously not hurt one bit by this. I can’t cover up my wilfull ignorance. My worship of power, no matter how grovellingly put, is always a sad thing to see. The fact is that the tobacco industry alone has murdered up to half a million Americans per year—multiply that by the number of years libertarians have taken money from tobacco lobbying groups while shilling for tobacco’s “liberty” and “freedom”, then multiply that by the number of people tobacco kills world-wide, subtract the profits and the money paid to libertarian front-groups, and what you have is someone who jumps up and down screaming about everything the guvmint does while totally ignoring the millions murdered every year by the people who fund libertarianism. The idea that something good will come out of the libertarian movement that gave us everything from global warming, Alan Greenspan, Joe McCarthy, DDT, and the global financial meltdown, if only the right libertards are in charge, is nuts.

• 89. Mike  |  August 2nd, 2012 at 4:26 am

  yippies is kind of already taken…

• 90. casino implosion  |  August 2nd, 2012 at 4:34 am

  Ruling elite lost the culture wars? How do you figure? They WON the culture war!

  The ideology of the ruling class, aka “centrism”, is “socially liberal, economically conservative”.

• 91. harry  |  August 2nd, 2012 at 7:25 am

  Question for the econ majors: is Mankiw, author of a popular microeconomics text, taken seriously at higher level econ courses? I’ve taken a microeconomics course using his text, and if I didn’t know any better, becoming a libertarian would be the natural outcome.

  Note: this particular text is suitable for 7th grade math level students. Knowing that this is all business majors need is quite funny. Also, freshman at Harvard use this text.

• 92. kingsnake  |  August 2nd, 2012 at 8:33 am

  Why isn’t Rick Moranis wearing his tuque?

• 93. RanDomino  |  August 2nd, 2012 at 9:18 am

  Look AEC, we ACTUAL Anarchists (anti-capitalist antiauthoritarians, not that it should have to be clarified) are warmed over hippie fucks and glorified trolltards. Hopefully, people won’t remember how utterly fucking stupid and worthless the hippies were politically, and they’ll think that our anarchism actually matters.

• 94. 2012truth  |  August 2nd, 2012 at 9:24 am

  @85 “yippies” is taken, google it.

  The Exile has resorted to base trolling and I like it. Although they already said it better than this Jacobin chap years ago, and in less words: “Anytime anyone says something Libertarian, spit on them.”

  If you guys are this desperate for page hits, get Ames to write something about Aurora instead of obscure Twitter feuds. America is thirsting for insight into what the fuck that was about, and the only answer is more Ames.

• 95. Mason C  |  August 2nd, 2012 at 12:10 pm

  #42 is runner-up for Line of the Day: “[Nick Gillespie] looks like the president of the Arthur Fonzarelli fan club.”

  He really was a joke on Maher’s show. The light and heat of democratic debate ain’t for libertarians. Like Chomsky once quipped about free-marketeers, forget about how to effectively provide food, shelter, and medical care, they’d rather “discuss economic models in n-dimensional space.”

• 96. Zirb  |  August 2nd, 2012 at 12:13 pm

  Ron Paul/Reason Magazine Libertarians are a walking contradiction. But it’s also a gateway drug into anarchism, which is what the next generation will be after shit continues to fail (when even the Danes will go bankrupt).

• 97. RanDomino  |  August 2nd, 2012 at 1:14 pm

  Yeah, like Occupy wasn’t shit? You were sucking its dick last year! Funny, you think everything we do is great but you still shit on us. Never mind that we’ve got the only remaining anticapitalist networks worth mentioning.

  All you do is bitch. Which is why I’m going to bitch about you bitching: “Hurr look at how anarchist hippies aren’t appreciated! Hurr you think you’re so superior! Hurr you’re a hipster of socialism, you statist you! Hurr hurr hurr!”

• 98. ?  |  August 2nd, 2012 at 4:10 pm

  we should pay tobacco companies $1 per retarded American killed.

• 99. Jesse  |  August 2nd, 2012 at 6:26 pm

  We have to somewhat blame the USA founding myth for the libertards. The idea that a bunch of powered hair ponderers designed a system that is awesome; that takes a clean sheet of paper and, by using a lot of logic and shit, contrives a system that will deliver the good life for everybody. It doesn’t matter what manner of men occupy the various parts of the mechanism. The poltical machine is so cleverly designed that even selfish fucktard who only seek their own gain will, by way of ingenious mechanisms, serve the common good while they thrash around trying to get rich. it’s a system of checks and balances!

  The USA was the first country that aspired to the pretense of being designed by smart guys. As if anybody could create a society out of their fucking imaginations. Hello. Society simply IS. It’s the way we’ve survived and had a good time since we were a species. We live in communities because we have to. Community meaning voluntary sacrifice for common good. In other words, Socialism.

  True Socialists see socialism as business as usual for the human race, the way things have been getting done for tens of thousands of years, just using modern tools like government, taxes, to make it work better and fit our time. Seeing all the other shit as anomolies, demented pipe dreams of greedy rich bitch wannabes, or power hungry stalinist puritan meglomanics.

  Socialists who understand the the system of laws and organization of government must conform to man’s natural social makeup. that man is a interdependant social animal, who among all animals is the most dependent at birth and before adulthood. A being who must depend totally on care and protection from adults. And who, when grown, is natually charged with the responsiblity of caring and protecting for the young, whether or not they spring from his personal loins. The efficient performance of this responsibility requires modern organization that keeps pace with the modern technology. This means government of laws that prohibit bad behavior as well as government of cooperation that requires common service in the form of taxes. Yet the paying of taxes is understood to be only a tool not the limit of individual responsibility to the common good. In addition to paying taxes, the individual is required by a higher law to practice volunteering in numerous ways, not the least of which is common courtesy. This higher law is enforced by nonjudical social sanction. Those assholes who treat others discourtesly are themselves treated thusly by their neighbors. Everything goes is bullshit. Children are taught to balance self focused activities and attitudes with community focused activities and attitudes. Again, this is the way of all earlier communities and technology can never replace real human solidarity.

• 100. zhubajie  |  August 2nd, 2012 at 6:54 pm

  “It’s Hip! It’s Cool! It’s Libertarianism!”

  It’s the Southern Red-neck attitude, but with more pretensions and less religion.

• 101. zhubajie  |  August 2nd, 2012 at 7:43 pm

  ” the idea Lenin and Bakunin both though would be the basis of a massive social revolution.”

  Marx and Bakunin had 0 use for each other. Lenin and Bakunin? I doubt it.

• 102. zhubajie  |  August 2nd, 2012 at 7:59 pm

  @76 “Want to see what an inside of a bag looks like?”

  What do you want to bet it smells like airplane glue inside the libtard bag?

• 103. SweetLeftFoot  |  August 2nd, 2012 at 8:17 pm

  Libertarianism: identity politics for affluent white men.

• 104. zhubajie  |  August 2nd, 2012 at 8:30 pm

  @96, Next generation America will be something like warlord China.

• 105. zhubajie  |  August 2nd, 2012 at 8:31 pm

  @99, the US social system was founded early 1600s by Puritans and Cavaliers, equally obnoxious fanatics who destroyed themselves in England, mid-1600s. But they’re still around in the USA, worse luck. Australia lucked out, only got the convicts.

• 106. Hipster  |  August 3rd, 2012 at 12:44 am

  I’m not like those Repulicrats or Democans, I don’t follow the mainstream media. I worship Ronald Reagan, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Matt Stone and Trey Parker as my gods.

  BEHOLD- I AM LIBERTARIAN, ALL THAT IS HIP.

  Sure, I vote Republican 95% of the time but I’m totally not one and I think they’re all stupid because I’m too smart for all that bullshit and I’m above it all!

  What we need is more freedom, more guns, and less government “help.” I don’t want a cleaner environment or cheaper health care- that’s fucking Communism, man! The free market can fix everything but Obama’s chaining it up and whipping it like a slave man!

• 107. Punjabi From Karachi  |  August 3rd, 2012 at 1:37 am

  There’s something wrong with your website, my Mozilla browser was blocking it.

  Also, sophomoric drivel is the right way to describe much of the eXile.

  Get back into paper boys. Or join up with Cracked.com. You’re looking like fossils otherwise.

  Not good for someone who’s claiming to be revolutionary.

• 108. SmartRothbard  |  August 3rd, 2012 at 2:21 am

  What about the libertard who kept coming back to leave a comment yet continually had his comment improved by the kind monitor on this site? Hasn’t this melted the illiterate Koch-suckup libertard’s heart? Why can’t we all just get along?

• 109. Barry Hussein Obama  |  August 3rd, 2012 at 3:19 am

  This is your libertard commenter in chief. I believe in Social Darwinism because I’m like that nerd character in The Office.

• 110. Cum  |  August 3rd, 2012 at 4:31 am

  They should publish a paper again, so they don’t look like fossils. Huh?

• 111. Rex Ruthor  |  August 3rd, 2012 at 5:12 am

  Libertarian: A little leech who projects his own parasitic nature onto others. A degenarate, cowardly little blackshirt who in his wanking fantasies imagines one day he’ll be Fuhrer, or at least will get to shine the Fuhrer’s shoes. A war lord, a Koch brother, a Cheney: these are beasts, hateful but fascinating. I would be interested to see what makes them tick. When I see a libertarian I flee lest I kill myself out of boredom. Libertarians have no brains, no personality, no original ideas, no spine, no humanity. I pray one day each one of them gets to experience their own little never-never-land utopia VERY thoroughly. NEVER argue with a libertard. Just spit on them, LITERARILY, and keep walking.

• 112. libertaer  |  August 3rd, 2012 at 5:38 am

  “You say potatoe, I say …” Here in Europe libertarianism is just anarchism. It’s on the left.

  American libertarianism should be called propertarianism. That’s what it is. It’s the ultimate entitlement philosophy.

  Propertarians think property rights are holy. 1% can own everything and the 99% have to accept this as god given. It’s in no way anti-state. Without a state there would be no property rights at all.

  The only good reason for property rights is that everybody profits from having them. Where this is not the case, why keep them? It’s a dumb idea to allow natural ressources or information goods or natural monopolies to be private property. Even when it comes to income from “working”, as a good thumb rule, society should tax away the rent part of any income stream. Economic rent is everything above what you could earn with the next best use of that factor of production. It’s always an income from owning things, not for producing them. It could be taxed away without hurting productivity.

• 113. Mike  |  August 3rd, 2012 at 7:18 am

  @101 I’m not saying they worked together (Lenin was 6 years old when Bakunin died), merely that the old left, including the serious radicals, all used the term “social semocracy” to describe their politics. Social democrats used to refer to those promoting bloody revolution, not some stable peaceful Nordic Model.

• 114. Mike  |  August 3rd, 2012 at 7:20 am

  *democracy

• 115. crazy_inventor  |  August 3rd, 2012 at 8:33 am

  I noticed several swipes at hippies in the comments.

  You people do realize that a concerted campaign was launched against ‘hippie’ culture to demonize it, and that COINTELPRO agent provocateurs, infiltrators, and other dirty tricks were employed, to create spectacles that the corporate media focused on, to paint all hippies with the same brush.
  – just as they’ve done with the occupy tactic.

  The culture has a wide diversity of people and values, so to poke at hippies as a monolithic group with such a misinformed stick, is to fall for the campaign’s goal of divide & conquer.

• 116. ariot  |  August 3rd, 2012 at 5:52 pm

  Is “liberty” modern shorthand for “fuck you, I’m getting mine”?

  That’s what it appears to mean lately anyway.

• 117. yandat  |  August 3rd, 2012 at 5:54 pm

  @115

  You’re right the Hippies were disciplined, organized and actually were threatening at the peak of the 60’s. That’s not the modern hippy. They just ape the worst stereotypes made of their ancestors. the physical trappings, clothing, music. you’d almost think they were plants – if we’re being cynical about FBI infiltration – considering how embarrassing they can be. I think it’s the fetishistic idealization of hippie culture that comes off as fucking weird, off putting and unserious.

  Were you at Occupy DC or Wall Street? You met these people, right?

• 118. Nyerd  |  August 3rd, 2012 at 7:30 pm

  @8 Ayn R.
  When did you forgive Nathan? When did you come to your senses, realizing that he was only doing what you would have commanded him to do.
  —-
  I have run into people who are really apathetic, but I have yet to run into someone who identifies him/herself as a libertarian. When I do, I want to ask that person what it’s like knowing that, without the bourgeoisie, there is literally no market for libertarianism. And that libertarian organizations require oligarchs to establish and perpetually fund and could not exist on their own.

• 119. Az  |  August 4th, 2012 at 7:51 am

  Almost forgot, when will we hear some releases from Connor’s chillwave project?

• 120. Megan Knight  |  August 4th, 2012 at 10:33 am

  @115

  Yes, the hippies were diverse. Turns out not that diverse. COINTELPRO happened because the FBI didn’t know, couldn’t know, that your average hippie would abandon the scene the moment the draft was repealed. It’s the usual situation with people: self-interest front and center.

• 121. Teighlor  |  August 4th, 2012 at 12:57 pm

  Because of this post I just became a paid subscriber to The eXiled.

• 122. crazy_inventor  |  August 4th, 2012 at 3:10 pm

  @ yandat 117

  I’m the working poor, however I aired thousands of hours of material, becoming this town’s ‘only occupy station’, material that includes protests here, right down the sidewalk where I live.

  over 250 clips I see, looking at the files..

  Here’s our protests –

  http://i48.tinypic.com/6qglqs.jpg

  Here, these people get called hippies 🙂

• 123. Anarchy Pony  |  August 4th, 2012 at 4:27 pm

  @ 101, Marx and Proudhon actually communicated frequently but had an eventual falling out.

• 124. TBishop  |  August 4th, 2012 at 4:31 pm

  I’m opossed to any threat to the two party system.

  As an employee of the military industrial complex (with a close relative on Wall Street) I can be assured that the Wars on drugs, terrorism, (inster threat, real or imagined…) will continue unabated under Romney or Obama. Plus the bankers will always be bailed out.

  Damned libertarians don’t threaten all that and anything more because all they do is help enrich the super-rich, so I love to see them get rich like this because in fact I’m a libertard who thinks he’s being ironic when in fact I’m just a sad bootlicker to the plutocrats.

• 125. euro-dude  |  August 4th, 2012 at 5:26 pm

  Financial writer John Mauldin talking about why so many of his fellow libertarians tend to be broke:

  « In my direct experience many individuals who paint themselves as libertarians have trouble coming up with the proverbial two nickels to rub together. Doug Casey and I have discussed this … and I don’t think either of us has a good answer. … I would hypothesize that it has to do with a latent inability to work as part of a team, something libertarians tend not to be very good at but which is often required to launch a successful career. … look no further than the reality that the Libertarian party has never been able to mount an effective national political campaign. »

  John Mauldin, ‘Paying Lip Service to Liberty’

  http://www.caseyresearch.com/cdd/paying-lip-service-liberty

• 126. Kraken  |  August 4th, 2012 at 6:01 pm

  As a European citizen I find some of the ideas embraced by libertarianism very attractive, specially the social ones.

  The appeal (almost anarchic) that we have total freedom to do with ourselves what we will is fantastic for me.
  Why does “the government”, that entity that taxes me and tells me I cannot park in my city without paying or that allows me to smoke tobbaco but not pot has the right to do so? (and in some cases execute or inprison me in case I dont obey).
  I can understand some laws are necesary so we all live in a peaceful way. But so many laws as we have now a days and so many government intervention in our daily lives I find extremely invasive of my liberty.

  When it comes to the economic part I always find that laws MUST be implemented because here we are talking not human-to-human relations but human-to-human organization relation. A company is not a human being and should be heavely regulated in the way it treats its employees.
  Of course how can a company, that is an even more abstract entity than the state, should have rights to invade my privacy, do medical tests on me, and decide when I can go on vacation or not? What kind of freedom is this? for who?
  However there is something I do agree with the libertarians on economic principle. And it is the disgust for “life on credit” the “lets print money” politics. That money does not have a real or just value, when it is such an important element of our social structure.

  So on the economic area I more or less agree with the author of the article. But I wouldent criticise libertarians for wanting to smoke pot or fuck whoever they please. That is freedom on social issues, a freedom that by the way comunisim never gave either.

• 127. Dimitri Ratz  |  August 4th, 2012 at 10:51 pm

  @126, Kraken, your totally right. The problem with American Libertarians is they try to fuck the workers in the workplace without even using lubricants like the Republican party.

• 128. Dimitri Ratz  |  August 4th, 2012 at 10:56 pm

  If Occupy Wall Street had people fielded in the election I’d vote for them over Greens, Independents or Dems/Reps

• 129. Osama Osama bin Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden Cleever  |  August 5th, 2012 at 12:23 am

  Hey, I’m announcing my comeback. Had to hide under the mattress for awhile, but now I’m back for keeps. You can catch me and our rebranded Qaeda posse Aug 19-21 during Happy Daze in Behchoko, Northwest Territories. We’ll be walkin the walk next to a cave-like (‘earth tones’) double-wide blocked up in front of Buzzard Billy Nguyen’s Nam Noodle House Annex, 28 Edzgwo Tili St. Like me, Billy’s a stone libertarian. So don’t fuck with him or me. Or the goats neither. Happy Hour 4-6 every afternoon. Saturday night is Crusaders Night.

• 130. FranciscoSanto  |  August 5th, 2012 at 4:25 am

  Libertarians “socially liberals”?

  From my experience(both IRL and in the net)your average libertarian is against animal rights,despises feminism,despises enviromentalism and gun laws and more often than not is a sort of racist

  OOOH BUT THEY SMOKE POTS AND ARE FOR GAY SEX…THIS CHANGE EVERYTHING!!

• 131. Epsilon  |  August 5th, 2012 at 7:52 am

  While some aspects of Ron Paul-esque Libertarianism (the “why the fuck isn’t anybody saying that? It’s fucking common sense” ones like ending the War on Terror and the War on Drugs), it, unfortunately, rests on the….premise that the plutocrats get the same arbitrary goverment boot-in-the-face than everybody else instead of having paid blowjobs from US’s congressmen.

  Is only considered at all as an alternative because of the two shit-flavored lollipops of the “licking boots for scraps” far-right party and the “spreading your ass-cheeks and praying that is over soon” far-right party.

  On the public vs. private sector debate: Is a stupid one. They both have their place on a functional society and is only when one intends to be on the place of other that bad stuff happens. Nobody wants private roads or public supermarkets.

• 132. vortexgods  |  August 5th, 2012 at 3:25 pm

  One of the things I’m seeing more of lately is overtly pro-War Libertarians. I think it’s because of all the young servicemen who got a taste for whores and then found out that back stateside that they could end up in a squad car or John School for that.

  Traditionally, Libertarians have taken an anti-War position, because the Pentagon is part of big government. Of course, since they were anti-communist, this mainly meant opposition to neo-colonial police actions that they weren’t going to have much impact on anyway. (And you could always say, “This isn’t a neo-colonial war at all… we’re fighting the commies!” and the Libertarians would buy it, since making the world safe for United Fruit is something they basically believe in.)

  However, turns out one of the few jobs left for most people is something involved in killing people in Third World countries and stealing their stuff, whether as a computer programmer for the DoD or a “bubblehead” on a nuclear sub. And unlike the TV character Blackadder, who explained the appeal of being an imperials soldier during WWI:

  “I’d had fifteen years of military experience, perfecting the art of ordering a pink gin and saying ‘Do you do it doggy-doggy?’ in Swahili, and then suddenly four-and-a-half million heavily armed Germans hoved into view. That was a shock, I can tell you.”

  These “war-makers” just can’t cynically admit that they enjoy the perks of being a minor warlord in an imperial army where they are much better armed and armored than whatever pitiful group of natives they are oppressing. So, they end up parroting all the stupid nonsense about “Islamist”-that and “Terrorist”-this that Mossad’s propaganda mills push out via the Right wing blogs.

  Not sure whether they believe it or not, but I prefer Blackadder’s candor. Seriously, you think “college” libertarians are bad? Try reading some pro-War libertarian stuff.

  It will make you feel like your brain is trying to commit suicide. You’ll know what the Ludovico technique from A Clockwork Orange felt like.

• 133. Anarchy Pony  |  August 5th, 2012 at 4:58 pm

  Kraken, there’s more than just capitalism and communism, and there is even more than one variant of each of those. Life ain’t black and white, it’s a whole wide range of grays, and even some actual colors as well.

• 134. Dugin  |  August 5th, 2012 at 9:09 pm

  @97 recall when they derided initial occupy organization as adbusters hippieshit

• 135. Kraken  |  August 6th, 2012 at 9:08 am

  Anarchy Pony yeah totally agree and im not sure what in my post made you think that I believe otherwise 🙂
  I never have suscribed myself to the black or white ideas, those are strategies of the elite to keep us divided and busy arguing over irreconcilable extremes instead of finding solutions.

• 136. Epsilon  |  August 6th, 2012 at 9:19 am

  @vortexgods

  You are just watching the transition that comes with age for quite a bit of Libertarians into full-blown GOP cheerleaders.

  Also, wars are ugly (hello IED’s) and I most miitary guys that actually cheer wars are Chairforce (Paultards get a lot of military support). People that do want more of the shooting and raping just sign up to Blackwater.

• 137. Teller  |  August 6th, 2012 at 11:54 am

  I may be all cute and quiet as I rim Penn, but as a freedom-loving Libertarian I support the right of racist and psychotic citizens of the US to kill people who look better than me.

• 138. Gina  |  August 6th, 2012 at 12:02 pm

  Here’s my fav quote from that ‘hep cat’ Hans Hermann Hoppe…who funnily enough, is sometimes disowned by some of the more squeamish libertarians. hahaha

  “A member of the human race who is completely incapable of understanding the higher productivity of labor performed under a division of labor based on private property is not properly speaking a person… but falls instead into the same moral category as an animal – of either the harmless sort (to be domesticated and employed as a producer or consumer good, or to be enjoyed as a “free good”) or the wild and dangerous one (to be fought as a pest). On the other hand, there are members of the human species who are capable of understanding the [value of the division of labor] but…who knowingly act wrongly… besides having to be tamed or even physically defeated [they] must also be punished… to make them understand the nature of their wrongdoings and hopefully teach them a lesson for the future”.
  – HH Hoppe “Democracy – The God That Failed”

• 139. damn red  |  August 6th, 2012 at 1:53 pm

  @130, It’s as if libertarianism was designed to not really challenge a person who accepts it thus allowing them to continue to act like clueless assholes, but classify themselves as an intelligent person.

  If political parties were cuts of meat libertarians are the chicken nuggets, heavily processed full of god knows what and palatable to children.

• 140. C. W. Buttsworth  |  August 6th, 2012 at 6:46 pm

  The people on the left would like to kill me via legal edict.
  The right would like to kill me using the military.
  The libertarians would let businesses kill me.
  The anarchists would kill me themselves.
  The authoritarians would have me killed, whereas the non-authoritarians would merely leave me to die.

  The eXiled with its recent willingness to engage in nerd-bashing and the absence of Brechter seems to have forgotten that some people are always screwed.

  So, yes, the more credulous and ill-informed of that underclass will resort to what they know of as “libertarianism”, because they believe that if they can somehow be “on their own” they will have some chance of not being ground under someone’s heel. And yes, to persons in this situation, letting all the other fuckers rot has its appeal.

  Of course, they are wrong. Power doesn’t work that way. Power can never be had by the underclass, because then they wouldn’t be the underclass anymore. Also, there will always be power, and there will always be an underclass.

  Sweet dreams!

• 141. Rex  |  August 7th, 2012 at 3:48 am

  @ gina. That’s pretty much what all of them are saying, but seldom do they formulate it so explicitly. Scratch the surface and under the facade of the Austrian school lurks the most famous Austrian of all time.

• 142. Robert Morris  |  August 7th, 2012 at 7:00 am

  You got me, the folks who get lung cancer from choosing to smoke are just as worthy of sympathy as the victims of the federal government’s war machine and rape camps. You are super courageous and clever. Drum roll. A bagtard gets one right!

• 143. Some Guy  |  August 7th, 2012 at 7:33 am

  What I don’t get is how getting thrown out of russia motivated you nice people to full-time libertarian bashing. The central libertarian belief is: other people are not your property, unless you are Massa Koch.

  You have no right to kill them, rob them, or force them to obey you. if you have a problem with that, then fuck you: you’re not fit to live in human society.

• 144. Davrus  |  August 7th, 2012 at 5:13 pm

  @139
  Personally speaking I think that the libertarians who shy away from Hoppe are simply incapable of facing up to the simple fact that absolute property rights means absolute dictatorial power for the few who have them.

• 145. TheTownlyBomb  |  August 7th, 2012 at 5:14 pm

  Wow, you’re almost think Libertarianism is a retarded philosophy for children?

  Hang on, my monocle got blown off.

• 146. super390  |  August 7th, 2012 at 10:09 pm

  #142: a generation ago most people smoked, because they were addicts, lied to relentlessly about the effects by a corporate conspiracy that was exposed in the ’90s by the Liggett company. People are not very rational actors; they are wired with all kinds of chemical and psychological triggers for addiction, and the corporations farm those addictions one after the other, leaving behind lung cancer, diabetes, and bankruptcy in their wake. We are all smokers, in a sense, the bad guys just haven’t found the perfect drug to enslave us all. They’re working on it, of course.

  Which destroys the entire free market premise of rational actors, perfect information and free will. With that gone, what else fails?

• 147. super390  |  August 7th, 2012 at 10:20 pm

  #132:

  Sounds like the scum is putrefying. Pro-war libertarians are just too sickening an idea for me to even analyze. But I recall a guy – not a veteran – who forthrightly exclaimed that it was perfectly reasonable for Bush’s friends to profit from Bush’s war. So I guess this is a shortcut straight to 1850s East India Company imperialism.

  I liked the anti-war libertarians precisely because I suspect the vast increase in the # of countries where the US has military installations reflects the growing # of governments that need their brand of capitalism protected from their angry citizens by the specter of US intervention. So if Ron Paul pulls the troops, the regimes fall, and the quid pro quos they made with Wall Street collapse. We suddenly will find out that American capitalism has little real value in the outside world without American bayonets.

  Perhaps the proof of this in the recent crushing of US neoliberalism in Latin America (while our troops were busy in Iraq) has convinced the libertards that the ni**ers worldwide are getting restless and need a sniff of grapeshot before the contagion spreads.

• 148. Gina  |  August 8th, 2012 at 7:58 am

  Two more really hip and cool quotes from “Democracy – The God That Failed”

  “Left-leaning Libertarians and multi-or- counter cultural lifestyle experimentalists, even if they were not engaged in any crime, would once again have to pay a price for their behavior. If they continued with their behavior or lifestyle [in public], they would be barred from civilized society and live physically separate from it, in ghettos or on the fringes of society, and many positions or professions would be unattainable to them.”

  ***I would suggest that wearing a left-leaning black leather coat would be reason for banishment…who agrees?

  “There can be no tolerance toward democrats and communists in a libertarian social order. They will have to be physically separated and expelled from society. Likewise, in a covenant founded for the purpose of protecting family and kin, there can be no tolerance toward those habitually promoting lifestyles incompatible with this goal. They – the advocates of alternative, non-family lifestyles such as, for instance, individual hedonism, parasitism, nature-environment worship, homosexuality, or communism – will have to be physically removed from society, too, if one is to maintain a libertarian order.”
  – Hans-Hermann Hoppe

• 149. RanDomino  |  August 8th, 2012 at 8:25 pm

  I’m completely in favor of not being a part of that guy’s society.

• 150. VonLmo  |  August 9th, 2012 at 3:13 pm

  “Libertarian”, it’s the new “gay.”

• 151. lolberals  |  August 10th, 2012 at 11:55 am

  The comment section is the definition of “painful for libertards”

• 152. guest  |  August 13th, 2012 at 11:01 pm

  It’s weird. I have spent my whole life on my knees groveling to plutocrats who never recognize my services to them. Then I read this, someone who stands up and says things in his own interest. And he’s not a plutocrat! And it makes me so angry I have to write a comment to defend my plutocrat Masters, who sadly, will never recognize me.

• 153. better than you  |  August 14th, 2012 at 6:37 am

  “Here’s another thing libertarians always forget to mention: a free-market capitalist society has never and by definition can never lead to full-employment. It has to be made to by—you guessed it—the Nanny State. Free market capitalism actually requires a huge mass of the unemployed—it’s not just a side effect.”

  Nor can any system, child.

  Look up the definition of full employment. It is not everyone having a job. It is where labor resources are being used in the most efficient way.

  Just everyone having jobs is not enough. Labor needs to be used efficiently (time is the only resource that actually matters; wasting time is the only sin that exists). Having bureaucracy does not eliminate efficiency. It creates it.

  Unemployed people are also not necessarily good for companies either. You falsely assume that the labor available meets the requirements of those who purchase labor.

  Guess you forgot your economics classes, eh?

  This is the type of stupidity I have come to expect from Americans. “I know it all, even when I do not.”

• 154. lester  |  August 14th, 2012 at 5:47 pm

  any press is good press, especially when your rugged individualist heroes call you a whimpering loser servicing billionaires. thanks guys. i’m not weird, just libertarian.

• 155. Paul Ryan  |  August 15th, 2012 at 9:16 am

  Hi. I’m Paul Ryan. I’m a Papist and a Nathan Branden wannabe. I just want to put in a good word for my friends Peter Thiel, Nick Gillespie, Penn Jillette, and my new BFF, Mitt Romney, the next COO of the United States of America. After we all engage in a manly circle jerk and cum in each others’ pig-shaped mouths, America, we plan to fuck you up the ass with Ronald Reagan’s embalmed penis. Aren’t you excited? And guess what? We’re even more so, suckers.

• 156. A D  |  August 19th, 2012 at 1:41 am

  Haha, I’m not subscribed to Jacobin, but I was told that it’s a serious hard-left journal. Hence I laughed out loud (it’s late) when I noticed that this awful piece was written by one of their editors. Here’s some help, Connor: people think you’re a crank because you’re oblivious to criticism. Why deal with academic market liberals when you can misrepresent one of them (Mises) and mock the kids?

  Of course, I wouldn’t defend the by now familiar behavior of hordes of e-libertarians which were spawned during Ron Paul’s ’08 and ’12 presidential campaigns. They’re obnoxious and pretend to have read more than they have, mirroring the left’s youth. Still, that they are able to see through Connor’s set of adolescent political narratives makes them allies.

  Gina, yes, Hoppe is a crank ideologue. I wish I could tell you that no one takes him seriously, but the Rothbard Institute (LvMI) does promote his writing. Unfortunately, this means that some young libertarians read him. To say that he is rejected by the rest of us out of “squeamishness” isn’t honest, though.

  Septeus7 writes: “They hate concept of government because it’s control of society by the mind instead of the arbitrary authority of the propertied elite.”

  Haha!

• 157. obrother  |  August 31st, 2012 at 3:13 pm

  This commentard doesn’t actually know anything because he’s been brainwashed by libertarianism. Also, Connor Kilpatrick is a filthy liar. A rascal! A scoundrel I say!

  Connor quoted the Austrian-school fascist Ludwig von Mises,

  “Fascism and similar movements aiming at the establishment of dictatorships are full of the best intentions and that their intervention has, for the moment, saved European civilization.”

  This makes is sound like Mises is praising fascism. This would come as a shock to anyone who is actually retarded enough to read Mises. Or even someone who has memorized the propaganda .

  Connor left out the rest:

  “The merit that Fascism has thereby won for itself will live on eternally in history. But though its policy has brought salvation for the moment, it is not of the kind which could promise continued success. Fascism was an emergency makeshift. To view it as something more would be a fatal error.”

  Consider that Mises just spent the previous entire page contrasting his own views, which he describes as liberal in the early 20th century usage of the word, with fascism and socialism. He criticizes both for wholesale eliminating their opponents, because violence is acceptable to them in achieving their ends.

  Read for yourself: http://mises.org/liberal/ch1sec10.asp

  Last paragraph.

  Connor, this misleading quote is intellectually dishonest. Much of the rest of what you write is, too, but this is the most egregious example, so I’m focusing on it: a mis-quote that intentionally distorts meaning.

  I call on you to laugh at my comment. It’s the honest thing to do.

• 158. obrother  |  August 31st, 2012 at 4:03 pm

  Here I am again commentarding. The AEC apparently refuses to improve two of my comments in a row so lucky you, you get to read me as my unimproved self:

  Connor quoted the Austrian-school economist Ludwig von Mises,

  “Fascism and similar movements aiming at the establishment of dictatorships are full of the best intentions and that their intervention has, for the moment, saved European civilization.”

  This makes is sound like Mises is praising fascism. This would come as a shock to anyone who has actually read Mises. Or even someone who has read the entire quote.

  Connor left out the rest:

  “The merit that Fascism has thereby won for itself will live on eternally in history. But though its policy has brought salvation for the moment, it is not of the kind which could promise continued success. Fascism was an emergency makeshift. To view it as something more would be a fatal error.”

  Consider that Mises just spent the previous entire page contrasting his own views, which he describes as liberal in the early 20th century usage of the word, with fascism and socialism. He criticizes both for wholesale eliminating their opponents, because violence is acceptable to them in achieving their ends.

  Read for yourself: http://mises.org/liberal/ch1sec10.asp

  Last paragraph.

  Connor, this misleading quote is intellectually dishonest. Much of the rest of what you write is, too, but this is the most egregious example, so I’m focusing on it: a mis-quote that intentionally distorts meaning.

  I call on you to redact this comment and apologize for this journalistic misrepresentation. It’s the honest thing to do.

• 159. obrother  |  August 31st, 2012 at 5:32 pm

  Please do the right thing and put me out of my libertard misery.

• 160. Gerald  |  September 5th, 2012 at 8:13 am

  The last paragraph of this long hate-filled diatribe basically amounts to “I want to barely contribute to society while leeching off of the productive members” so your definition of freedom comes at the expense of another (after all someone somewhere has to provide that free healthcare). The difference between your utopia and the libertarian utopia is that you want to use force to achieve your means. Hardly an ideal worth fighting for…Totally, just ask our Supreme Libertarian Leaders Charles and David Koch. They worked had for their trust fund wealth.

• 161. LEFTTOFACE  |  October 20th, 2012 at 10:22 am

  “Then they’ll say that it gives the government tyrannical power. Okay. Let me know when the Danes open a Guantánamo Bay in Greenland.”

  That’s a stupid fucking comparison. The Danes, for one, can’t afford to build a Guantanmo Bay in Greenland because, *gasp, they have limited FUNDS AND GOVERNMENT POWER to do that! LOL! You moron. Denmark is also about 1/300 the size of America. Everyone knows everyone in Denmark, so big governments can work, because if you screw someone in Denmark, you essentially screw your neighbor.

• 162. gay4liberty1775  |  November 26th, 2012 at 4:14 pm

  Oh eXiled, how I love reading you

  Please, libertarianism is a retarded choice and rooted in the Kochs’ belief that government is a brake on the evil of the corporations you fear. Just as you feel that corporations exploit the worker, I feel the Kochs boots on my tongue, and mmmm do I enjoy licking their boots!

• 163. KrsC  |  December 11th, 2012 at 5:16 pm

  Seriously, this hurt my brain:

  “Here’s the real reason libertarians hate the idea. The welfare state is a check against servility towards the rich. A strong welfare state would give us the power to say Fuck You to our bosses—this is the power to say “I’m gonna work odd jobs for twenty hours a week while I work on my driftwood sculptures and play keyboards in my chillwave band. And I’ll still be able to go to the doctor and make rent.”

  Sounds like freedom to me.”

  It actually sounds like I am grown fag who misses my mommy’s umbilical cord to me. This is why welfare scares me, cuz I’m still sucking mommy’s umbilical cord. myah!

• 164. Marion Delgado  |  December 17th, 2012 at 11:19 pm

  Objection: postulates a brain not in evidence. Therefore, claimed harm is undoubtedly spurious.

• 165. Steve  |  December 26th, 2012 at 4:41 pm

  http://www.bastiat.org/en/the_law.html

  “Please understand that I do not dispute their right to invent social combinations, to advertise them, to advocate them, and to try them upon themselves, at their own expense and risk. But I do dispute their right to impose these plans upon us by law — by force — and to compel us to pay for them with our taxes.

  I do not insist that the supporters of these various social schools of thought — the Proudhonists, the Cabetists, the Fourierists, the Universitarists, and the Protectionists — renounce their various ideas. I insist only that they renounce this one idea that they have in common: They need only to give up the idea of forcing us to acquiesce to their groups and series, their socialized projects, their free-credit banks, their Graeco-Roman concept of morality, and their commercial regulations. I ask only that we be permitted to decide upon these plans for ourselves; that we not be forced to accept them, directly or indirectly, if we find them to be contrary to our best interests or repugnant to our consciences.

  But these organizers desire access to the tax funds and to the power of the law in order to carry out their plans. In addition to being oppressive and unjust, this desire also implies the fatal supposition that the organizer is infallible and mankind is incompetent. But, again, if persons are incompetent to judge for themselves, then why all this talk about universal suffrage?”

  You don’t have to like us, and we don’t have to like you. Just leave us the fuck alone, and we will do the same for you.

• 166. It's Slappening  |  January 18th, 2013 at 2:07 pm

  LOL BUTTHURT!

• 167. Will L.P.  |  February 9th, 2013 at 12:20 pm

  Shoe me ONE piece of evidence or SOURCE where the “elite” has called for libertarianism? Besides the billionaire Koch brothers, that is. Just one source besides the richest brothers in the world who invented libertarianism…

• 168. Will L.P.  |  February 9th, 2013 at 12:26 pm

  LOL @ these comments. All I say is the same hate-rhetoric and ignorance coming from the liberals who are vested in their “team”…just like the way repubs are vested in their “team”…picking sides is for the simple minded.

  NOT ONE COMMENT I’ve seen has libertarian right. Slave owners? Higher taxes? ROFL! That’s the OPPOSITE of libertarianism.

  Why do stupid people feel the need to label anyway? You can’t just be a good person anymore, you have to be affiliated with someone so the liberals know in what way they will hate you.

• 169. Cavoyo  |  March 27th, 2013 at 3:54 pm

  @165 First give back all of the wealth you’ve stolen from American tribes and African slaves. Then we can talk about “being left alone.” Also, I don’t remember Europeans “peacefully acquiescing” to Native Americans and Africans who didn’t want to be colonized and enslaved to build capitalism. I don’t remember bosses “peacefully acquiescing” to workers who wanted to unionize. Libertarians are nothing more than the most vile of hypocrites, thieves that demand you respect their “right” to their stolen property, abusers who demand non-violence as they beat you senseless.

• 170. toya  |  June 2nd, 2013 at 8:09 am

  Hello! This post couldn’t be written any better! Reading through this post reminds me of my old room mate! He always kept talking about this. I will forward this write-up to him. Pretty sure he will have a good read. Thanks for sharing!

• 171. Michael Price  |  August 21st, 2013 at 7:57 pm

  When you start from the premise that the ruling class like libertarians you make me look stupid. Look at how the ruling class actually treats libertarians – showers them with hundreds of millions. Look at how Ron Paul got treated – the Kochs made him head of Citizens for a Sound Economy. Establishment Republicans are one pawn, libertarians another. So to claim that libertarianism is some sort of last ditch defence against progressivism is right. I should do my damn research next time so that the AEC doesn’t have to improve my retarded comments.

• 172. Michael Price  |  August 21st, 2013 at 8:02 pm

  “General Pinochet’s Chile was a longtime favorite. ”
  Nope, (some) libertarians said that Pinochet’s Chile was economically better than Allende’s Chile. That’s not called being a utopia, that’s called being halfway decent. And it didn’t require a fascist coup to get it that way, it required fascist generals to STOP BEING AS FASCIST. After the coup there were 2 years of the economy being horrible, even though they scrapped some of the more egregious errors of Allende. The Generals got so desperate they actually asked someone advise, and Milton Friedman gave it. They gave up some of their power and things got better.

  Oh, and also I believe in the Tooth Fairy, because the PR firm I work for told me that our libertarian client wants us to believe in the Tooth Fairy, and you know, Customer Is King!

• 173. neptronix  |  August 22nd, 2013 at 10:18 pm

  I’m really proud of myself for donating to you guys years ago.

• 174. Tom Walls  |  August 22nd, 2013 at 10:35 pm

  This comment proves that I’ve lived my entire life as a bootlicking tool to Master Koch.

• 175. Ady  |  August 22nd, 2013 at 10:51 pm

  I am not a libertarian [well okay actually I am, and a troll to boot, but my Master tells me that if I begin a trolling comment pretending to have nothing personal at stake, that people will believe I’m sincere, so I hope it’s working! ;)] in the game but this read has been painful. I kept looking for an attempt at a rational argument and instead I kept running into sarcasm and empty statements served as truth. Well.. to be honest you presented some numbers about the Millennials but that doesn’t prove that the whole libertarian ideology is wrong.

  I have a hard time identifying with a group because any form of collectivism disgusts me. It’s not about what I am, it’s about what I do and that is: I follow the Non Aggression Principle.

  I was raised under one of the worst communist dictatorships in recent history (very similar to North Korea today) and I almost died because of socialized health care. I saw the true colors of the state and I cannot unsee them. The people like you that grew up pampered by a relatively free market, that vomit communist non sense and talk about things they have absolutely no idea about, make me sick to my stomach.

  You are either delusional, incredibly infantile or outright thieves. Self entitled cowards that don’t have the guts to rob me in the street, empowering the state instead so they can do the job for you.

  You know… because all you want is to “work on [your] driftwood sculptures and play keyboards in [your] chillwave band” and suck at it because if you were really talented you would make enough money from it to pay for your health care.

  That, my dear “red” is who you are, a self entitled, talentless parasite with delusions of grandeur. What you described is not freedom. Your freedom cannot come at a cost that another is forced to pay against their will. That is the opposite of freedom and you are just too stupid to make the difference or too evil to care.

• 176. TomS  |  August 23rd, 2013 at 7:06 am

  This is nothing but a smear piece written by a half-wit for the jeering approval of his fellow Statist butt-licks. Libertarians all suck because we read too much? We’re f*ckt*rds who support child labor because we don’t buy the government line on claiming credit for stopping it? Nick Gillespie is uncool because he wears a leather jacket which is like a mullet? WTF? Say it isn’t so. There are people this stoopid out there who can put even simple words into sentences and get approving comments. Ugg. All is lost. Man is not a thinking animal. He is a story telling one.

• 177. Ray  |  August 23rd, 2013 at 1:42 pm

  I just want to be left alone. And keep the money I earn from my labor. Is that so terrible? Instead I am a slave to the state 32% of my adult life.

• 178. Dave  |  October 22nd, 2013 at 2:37 pm

  Wow! New levels of foul mouth laced stupidity here. The funniest parts are the posters who actually believe and cheer what this Neanderthal writes. Non-stop ranting filled with mere opinions and zero facts about sums up this verbal vomit.

  Have fun kiddos. I am going back to my successful capitalist libertarian loving life. I look forward to the next OWS (aka I am a whiney bitch that can’t make it in the real world) demonstration on my very big and expensive TV. Suckers.

• 179. Chris  |  October 30th, 2013 at 8:17 am

  Great article! It pretty much sums up how I have been feeling but haven’t been able to verbalize when talking to people about how Libertarian is the new black for Republican douche nozzles.

• 180. Connor  |  March 2nd, 2014 at 5:50 pm

  What a load of drivel libertarianism is. Commenters who can’t handle this article (such as myself) are just little pussy boys afraid that libertarianism can’t stand up to any real scrutiny. What a frightened little fag-commenter I am.

• 181. Angie  |  September 28th, 2014 at 9:25 pm

  I’m a whining butt-maggot on Master Koch’s taint, and I will do whatever it takes to protect my Master. Because that’s what libertarian butt-maggots do.

• 182. Stacey E.  |  October 19th, 2014 at 4:13 am

  I always find it fascinating when someone makes the “socially liberal,fiscally blah blah blah” speech, because they aren’t EVER socially liberal. I’m guessing their idea of being socially liberal is “maybe” thinking abortion could possibly be acceptable, maybe in the case of rape, but God knows, we’re soon gonna put an end to THAT, too.

• 183. Mark Davis  |  December 16th, 2014 at 8:20 am

  What is it about a voluntary society that is so hard for a Koch butt-maggot like me to understand that it’s a giant ruse by the rich to fool suckers like me?

  Here is some really stupid shit that I feel for that pretends to show the real difference between libertarians and authoritarians/progressives: http://www.strike-the-root.com/progressives-libertarians-and-selfishness

• 184. thoma  |  May 28th, 2016 at 3:27 pm

  screw the libertarian communist party!

  trump all the way!

• 185. Roberto  |  June 29th, 2016 at 10:22 pm

  Anti-Libertarian bigotry is an ugly thing.

  Libertarians are helping people change the world positively.

  For info on the Libertarian and fans world community in every country, see http://www.kochind.com

Leave a Comment

(Open to all. Comments can and will be censored at whim and without warning.)

Subscribe to the comments via RSS Feed