|
Written by Rob Power
|
|
Tuesday, 04 November 2008 16:47 |
I was both pleased and frustrated when I finally saw the November 4 issue of The Advocate, which included an article on Outright Libertarians on page 19. Pleased because, no matter how negative the article was, it provided a "this organization exists" moment of national LGBT media that Outright had never had before. But frustrated because the author (who was very friendly, so I assume it was unintentional) totally misrepresented Libertarianism.
While there were quite a few errors and misquotes in the article, the most glaring problem was the suggestion that Libertarians do not believe that government should protect individual rights.
"To be sure, trusting people or business to protect rights isn't an idea most Americans hold..."
Rather, protecting individual rights is the one and only job that Libertarians want the government to do. Where we differ with the Democrats on the Advocate's editorial board is in how we define the word "rights."
Libertarians know that the only true rights are Life, Liberty, and justly-acquired Property. For those who don't understand this statement, ISIL has put together a very informative Flash animation entitled "The Philosophy of Liberty". Libertarians also know that most of the so-called "rights" that Democrats tend to support, such as housing, healthcare, a job, etc., are really just commodities that governments often try to turn into privileges. Unfortunately, for government to turn these commodities into privileges, they have to infringe on the true rights of others (typically Property, though sometimes Liberty and rarely Life), in order to pay for these privileges. Conversely, true rights don't cost anything for government to recognize (e.g. free speech is truly "free," while "free healthcare" is incredibly expensive).
But despite the errors, misquotes, and misrepresentation of Libertarianism, this article was a net gain for Outright Libertarians, because it informed "politically homeless" LGBT people, who knew that they weren't Democrats or Republicans, that Libertarianism was a real alternative. Frankly, given that we were not fervent Obama supporters, one could say that we got away relatively unscathed, compared to any other Obama critics covered by the Advocate in the past. That they had to resort to making us look like we didn't understand the difference between the House and the Senate, and suggest that Libertarians don't support any due process for LGBT victims of actual crime, proves that there really was no good rebuttal to the main quarrel that Libertarians have with LGBT Democrats -- that laws that discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity, even if that discrimination is in favor of LGBT people, are wrong and should not be pursued as part of our agenda.
|
