The problem with libertarianism

Libertarianism is the proposition that we are agents of free will. Libertarians promote freedom.

Particularly you will hear libertarians promote freedom of speech as a right that humans ought to enjoy. If you like, the internet is an expression of this libertarian view. We are each singularly responsible for our own views, and each of us has the right to express that view, free from persecution or censorship.

Recently Julian Assange founder of Wikileaks has supported the rights of Andrew Bolt, right wing journalist and self-styled evangelist of the conservative view, to disparage Indigenous Australians who are not 100% "black." In doing this, Assange promotes an individual's right of free speech over and above other rights, such as the right to be free from persecution or harm, or the right to be free from defamation, as the case may be.

In this article I want to promote the view that Libertarianism is misguided, that there is no such thing as the right to "freedom of speech," or any other right for that matter. Rights are things that we fight for, and are enshrined in law and protected by the courts. But rights come hand in hand with responsibilities. There are no sacred rights, no first order rights, no rights that trump other rights. All rights have to be negotiated, and diligently applied.

Libertarianism states that all of us have free will, and are responsible for our actions. It is a very right wing approach to the idea of justice and desert. Forgive me if I am wrong, but the idea of "direct democracy" springs from this same philosophy, that is, that each of us freely makes decisions and is responsible for our acts. This is what the establishment wants us to believe. And the media is able to control what people are likely to express through "direct democracy" or any other form of democracy. As long as we make people singularly responsible we don't have to worry about social justice at all.

Libertarianism promotes property rights and intellectual property rights. Intellectual property rights make the cost of medicines too expensive for poor countries to afford. Private property ensures that the minority control wealth.

There are other dangers. Civil libertarians promote the rights of the criminal over the rights of the victim. Often they will promote the rights of the paedophile over the rights of the child. There is a place for crime and punishment. But according to libertarians there is no crime and there ought to be no punishment.

Libertarians promote the notion of free will. Most philosophical texts will argue that there is no such thing, or if there is such a thing, it is a thing that is rarely realised or exercised. But libertarians want us to be free in all of our actions. There should be no public scrutiny, no social justice. They are against police because they do not acknowledge crime. Indeed the one crime they might acknowledge is when someone is deprived of their freedom. So they are for no censorship of the internet, even when child pornography is available. Child pornography, according to libertarians, is a small price to pay for internet censorship.

But it is the right wing that controls what you see and hear, even on the internet. It is the resources people have at their disposal that determine the extent to which they can exploit the internet for their own purposes. And the biggest furphy of all is that the internet is somehow free. Libertarians condone hate crime, such as the inauspicious right wing nonsense of Andrew Bolt. And his opinions are trumped up as truth. This is the truth you will find on the internet. If the internet was capable of changing the world how did we end up in Iraq? If social media was capable of changing the world why is the rest of the world allowing the suppression of the occupy movement?

Libertarians know that those with the most to hide have the most to lose. They do not innocently promote these "freedoms," they use these "freedoms" for subterfuge. If you aren't fighting for it it probably isn't worth having.

Courts of law are not the enemy. The state is not the enemy. The greatest enemy of truth is ignorance. The greatest impediment to freedom is private property. But freedom has to be fought for, and it also has to be protected. The most important protection is protection from itself. When freedom is used as a tool for persecution, as in the case of Andrew Bolt's defamation of Aboriginals, then we can think ourselves lucky to live in a land where there is a functioning law system, however imperfect.

Our rights have been trampled upon in Melbourne with the occupy protest. But those rights are something that are not given to us by libertarianism, they are rights that have been fought for over time, the right to protest, the right to march, the right to speak and be heard. Many of these rights have been won by the union movement, and again we can thank the strong influence of the union movement on the Labor Party for the fact that it has not capitulated totally to the right in these, the darkest days of capitalism before its fall.

Libertarianism is dark and dangerous. In the name of freedom it threatens all of our freedoms, and denies social justice to the most vulnerable. Freedom of speech does not protect the rights of the vulnerable, only people working together in a social movement achieves that, and that is the very antithesis of libertarianism.

This is meant as a discussion piece, so please feel free to add your thoughts.