Monday, 21 August 2006

Pigeonholing

Megan asks:

How did I end up on the Libertarian circuit anyway? I am quite the bleeding heart; I give change to homeless people and play team sports and volunteer in a community garden and shit. It’s like I’ve fallen in with a bad crowd, just ‘cause they’re all funny and cool. Marginal Revolution is totally a gateway drug.

I’m not sure any of those things would qualify or disqualify anyone from being a libertarian (or even a Libertarian), since none of them have to do with the use of the government’s monopoly on the legitimate use of force to coerce certain individual behavior. No libertarian I’m aware of would forbid† Megan from giving change to homeless people, playing team sports, or volunteering in community gardens; nor would any* make her do any of those things.

† Hardcore Objectivists would probably make fun of her for doing some of these things, but one need not subscribe to Objectivist beliefs to be a libertarian. Thank God.
* Well, except a few liberals who like to call themselves “libertarian” because they’re for some unfathomable reason embarrassed to be known as liberals, like Bill Maher. But that’s a whole other kettle of fish.

1 comment:

Any views expressed in these comments are solely those of their authors; they do not reflect the views of the authors of Signifying Nothing, unless attributed to one of us.

I should be careful talking about libertarians in front of libertarians. More specifically, I am a tax-and-spend Democrat, reflexively liberal-type. Thanks for reading, though.

 
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