I'm certainly no expert on libertarian theorists, but I'm pretty sure I've never seen anything as vile as these excerpts from Hoppe.
Again. wondering what terp was expecting when he posted this?
Pretty sure he hasn't read it - he's just going by the headline of what's wrong with democracy.
Libertarians just want to be free to do whatever they wish…like owning slaves and stealing native peoples lands.
Yes, thank you. That said, I assumed that we would be discussing a book club at which someone selects a book, everyone else reads a different book, then they all speak over one another explaining why the book they independently selected was better.
PVW said:
There's more, so much more, but I think we all get the idea. I didn't even get into his thoughts on the American civil war (no points for guessing his views there). But really, is any of this so surprising? Who's shocked to discover that a philosophy that posits the moral superiority of wealthy landowners turns out to be full of white supremacists?
I'd just like to add that I can't even consider reading any more than that of Hoppe's prose. It's just brutal trying to slog through. Which to me is an indication of someone whose thoughts aren't particularly well organized.
Just trying to get my hands around this tome, I looked through the table of contents and the index. I was curious about a word, "decivilization", which seems to be important given its frequency and the fact that it's in a chapter title.
I used a word search on the text to see it used in context. I still have no idea what its meaning is for the author, it seems to be something that the reader is supposed to be familiar with. There's a citation in a footnote to something else the author wrote, maybe it's explained more fully there.
So, the only way to perceive what the author and his "libertarian" co-religionists mean by this term, is to see how it's used in context. Some guidance is provided in this passage on page 185, concluding a chapter, where he describes the opposite of "decivilization", and consequently his ideal society.
"However, even if all of this does not give much hope for the future, all is not lost. There still remain some pockets of civilization and culture. Not in the cities and metropolitan areas, but in the heartland (countryside). In order to preserve these, several requirements must be fulfilled: The state - a judicial - monopoly must be recognized as the source of decivilization: states do not create law and order, they destroy it. Families and households must be recognized as the source of civilization. It is essential that the heads of families and households reassert their ultimate authority as judge in all internal family affairs. (Households must be declared extraterritorial territory, like foreign embassies.) Voluntary spatial segregation, and discrimination, must be recognized as not bad but good things that facilitate peaceful cooperation between different ethnic and racial groups. Welfare must be recognized as a matter exclusively of families and voluntary charity, and state welfare as nothing but the subsidization of irresponsibility."
Prosperous, selfish white guy philosophy.
The paragraph right above the one reprinted in my post above has this gem of a thought:
"Civilization and culture do have a genetic (biological) basis. However, as the result of statism - of forced integration, egalitarianism, welfare policies, and family destruction - the genetic quality of the population has most certainly declined."
He footnotes to a work, by Seymour W. Itzkoff, The Decline of Intelligence in America. So I looked up what that was. It's pure, unadulterated, "The Bell Curve" racist garbage.
Mark Levin has been very influential in the lives of these people calling themselves “libertarian”. After all he’s an expert on constitutional studies right?
“De-civilization” could mean they want to go back to the days of the pilgrims, when the individual could abuse his wife and children and nobody is allowed to voice their concerns? Maybe teach their boys to shoot cans for practice … and as they get older have them practice shooting mexi-cans? Have a couple of slaves around the homestead? No law enforcement, in fact they will be the ones making and breaking the laws…
Terp is just another confused person who thinks he’s conservative enough not to be a liberal. He ain’t no stinkin libertarian…
By the way, thank you to PVW for finding and making this available. Our first impression of Hoppe's thought is confirmed by the second, third, fourth, fifth, etc. impressions and further examinations.
Jaytee said:
Mark Levin has been very influential in the lives of these people calling themselves “libertarian”. After all he’s an expert on constitutional studies right?
“De-civilization” could mean they want to go back to the days of the pilgrims, when the individual could abuse his wife and children and nobody is allowed to voice their concerns? Maybe teach their boys to shoot cans for practice … and as they get older have them practice shooting mexi-cans? Have a couple of slaves around the homestead? No law enforcement, in fact they will be the ones making and breaking the laws…Terp is just another confused person who thinks he’s conservative enough not to be a liberal. He ain’t no stinkin libertarian…
pretty sure he explicitly stated he's not libertarian.
ml1 said:
pretty sure he explicitly stated he's not libertarian.
Not anymore anyway. And even if he did, after Terp said he'd vote for DeSantis for President, I'd have laughed him off Libertarian Island.
DaveSchmidt said:
Oh. I was here for the Librarian Book Club.
That's actually a movie club.
Speaking of "libertarianism".
The collapse of Silicon Valley Bank is an example of the deficiencies of "libertarian" approaches to government and the markets. The "libertarians" of Silicon Valley decided that it was "every tech bro for himself" with a run on the bank.
ml1 said:
SVB needed this guy to talk to their customers
I don't think that would work with these guys.
https://twitter.com/torrenegra/status/1634573234187407369?s=20
Guess smedley is in the picture.
https://patch.com/new-jersey/newarknj/nj-libertarians-back-8-congress-candidates-2024-election
Jaytee said:
Guess smedley is in the picture.
https://patch.com/new-jersey/newarknj/nj-libertarians-back-8-congress-candidates-2024-election
They don't have a candidate in Sherrill's (South Orange and Maplewood) district?
nohero said:
They don't have a candidate in Sherrill's (South Orange and Maplewood) district?
You noticed that huh…
Jaytee said:
Guess smedley is in the picture.
https://patch.com/new-jersey/newarknj/nj-libertarians-back-8-congress-candidates-2024-election
why?
Jaytee said:
Guess smedley is in the picture.
https://patch.com/new-jersey/newarknj/nj-libertarians-back-8-congress-candidates-2024-election
Duh, never was and never will be a libertarian.
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So I took a look at the book terp recommended in the Walker thread. Moving my reply to its own thread as people might actually want to talk about the GA race and not the latest entry into libertarian book club (previous entry here).
As a matter of principle, I made sure to get the book without paying for it. If there were some way to make each download of the book somehow count as a sale and increase his taxable income, I'd do that.
He starts off by explicitly rejecting an empirical approach. His arguments are to be understood as being true a priori, like mathematical theorems. "A priori theory trumps and corrects experience", and his claims about society, economics, and human nature he puts on the same level. He seems the sort of person who, for example, might post "1+1=2" to Twitter and believe he'd made some profound point about gender identity.
Good thing for his argument he started off that way, as much of his book makes all sorts of claims about how monarchies and various states work which, if compared with actual history, would immediately collapse. This inability of libertarian theory to make a convincing case for itself in the actual world we live in, rather than abstract fantasy castles, is one I've frequently pointed out, and this book is lousy with it. But as that's a point of long belabored, I won't do so again here.
No, what I found most interesting about this book is that it reveals the question of who exactly libertarians are appealing to. It's pretty common, IME, to see libertarians making populist, anti-elite arguments. If you actually read libertarian writings, though, it's clear that it's not the idea of elites they have a problem with, they just think we have the wrong elites. The proper elites, naturally, would be themselves.
Hoppe is pretty explicit about this. He thinks monarchy was better than democracy, though still sees monarchy as fatally flawed. In his discussions of monarchy, though, he quite clearly identifies with the nobles, not the commoners. Somewhat amazingly, he manages to write a whole book that spends a great deal of time talking about monarchy and only twice even references serfs, and then only to claim that contemporary tax payers pay a heavier economic burden than they did. As I said, good thing for his argument he began by rejecting actual history.
He's opposed to any kind of egalitarianism. He wants a hierarchy, and believes certain men (and yes, he almost certainly means "men") ought naturally to be at the top.
You'll be unsurprised to learn that there's not merely an economic, but a, uh, let's wink and call it a "cultural" component, to this natural nobility. His complaint in the previous quote about demands for reparations is of course one clue (funny how libertarian thinkers spend so much time railing against taxation as theft, but are so opposed to the idea of reparations, isn't it?) He talks a lot about immigration. Here's one passage:
Or, as a certain washed up reality tv host put it, no sh*-hole countries.
There's a lot more of that kind of stuff.
There's more, so much more, but I think we all get the idea. I didn't even get into his thoughts on the American civil war (no points for guessing his views there). But really, is any of this so surprising? Who's shocked to discover that a philosophy that posits the moral superiority of wealthy landowners turns out to be full of white supremacists?