RSSYou Aren’t A “Libertarian” By A Long Shot
J.J. Jackson* | September 28, 2008
There are lots of self-styled, libertarian wannabes out there. In fact it seems to be fashionable for any moron who doesn’t want to be called a “liberal” or a “conservative” to claim the title. It appears that we have another such group in the Center for the Advancement of Capitalism and Nicholas Provenzo who claim to be libertarian yet are promoting the murder of innocent children because they may have Down Syndrome and are therefore a burden on society.
Lifenews.com reports:
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) — A writer for a libertarian group has written perhaps the most scathing attack on pro-life vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin since the Alaska governor was announced weeks ago as John McCain’s running mate. Nicholas Provenzo condemns Palin for the birth of her baby Trig, who has Down syndrome.
Provenzo, who writes for the Center for the Advancement of Capitalism, not only bashes her for allowing Trig to be born, but says she should have made the so-called morally justifiable decision to kill him in an abortion.
The Center for the Advancement of Capitalism bills itself as a group “dedicated to advancing individual rights and economic freedom through Ayn Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism.”
“Like many, I am troubled by the implications of Alaska governor and Republican Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s decision to knowingly give birth to a child disabled with Down syndrome,” Provenzo writes.
“Given that Palin’s decision is being celebrated in some quarters, it is crucial to reaffirm the morality of aborting a fetus diagnosed with Down syndrome (or by extension, any unborn fetus)—a freedom that anti-abortion advocates seek to deny,” he adds.
Provenzo advocates not only a discriminatory, but apparently a pro-eugenics view of the disabled that rivals that of Nazi Germany.
“A parent has a moral obligation to provide for his or her children until these children are equipped to provide for themselves,” he contends. “Because a person afflicted with Down syndrome is only capable of being marginally productive (if at all) and requires constant care and supervision, unless a parent enjoys the wealth to provide for the lifetime of assistance that their child will require, they are essentially stranding the cost of their child’s life upon others.”
Let me set the record straight. No, and I when I say no I mean no, libertarian believes that it is ok to take the life of an innocent person on purpose. Libertarians believe in unalienable rights, one of which is the right to life, which are maintained by all innocent people. Criminals are another story and libertarians throughout history have supported the death penalty for crimes that include violence against others. But never do true libertarians support the taking of innocent life which posses no threat to harming another.
To summarize my comments you, Mr. Provenzo, are no “libertarian”.
As for Ayn Rand, Rand’s philosophy was that of rational self-interest. There is no, absolutely no, rational self-interest in taking the life of a child who is not threatening the life of the mother carrying it.
More than a few people have suggested the removal of people from society because they are undesirable. The NAZIs and the Stalinists in Russia come to mind as two of the most prominent. They certainly were not libertarians.
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12 Responses to “You Aren’t A “Libertarian” By A Long Shot”
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I cannot believe there are still idiots who think it is libertarian to support murder of children. These people need to just admit who they are - liberal progressives.
Read man’s Rights by Ayn Rand.
A right is a moral principle defining and sanctioning an individual’s freedom of action in a social context. Rights only apply to actual living individual human beings. A developing fetus in a woman’s uterus is a potential living individual human being and has no more rights than an appendix or a hair follicle which have none. It becomes an actual living individual human being when it is born and separate from the woman who has born it. At that instant it has rights as defined above and killing it intentionaly is murder. Abortion at any stage is not murder and entirely up to the woman with that potential within her as a part of her body.
Ralph C Whaley MD on September 28th, 2008 8:40 pm :
“Rights only apply to actual living individual human beings. A developing fetus in a woman’s uterus is a potential living individual human being and has no more rights than an appendix or a hair follicle which have none.”
Everything else you have to say is predicated upon this lie which someone who is a real “MD” would know. You are either not a real MD or you are not qualified to practice medicine if you are one.
Jeff has talked about what is life indepth. Life consists of some basic things which are homostasis, organization, metabolism, growth, adaptation, response to stimuli, and the potential for reproduction at some point in its life cycle. Do you really expect anyone to accept you poorly formed argument that a fertilized egg does not have all these traits?
I learned about this in basic biology. You should have too. I suspect you are blinded by ideology.
Prove me wrong about what is life. I challenge you to. No matter what definition you come up with I can show you that a fertilized egg has all such traits. And if you try to concoct an unreasonable definition I will show you how you are wrong by showing you a living organism that defies your definition and thus destroying your definition.
I knew a faux libertarian would try to make some immbicilic argument like this. You didn’t disappoint either.
A hair follicle is not a human being (although it is part of a human being) and any doctor that would try to equate a fetus to such is a quack. But killing a hair follicle is not murder because murder only applies to the killing of a human being.
“Prove me wrong about what is life.”
You are wrong about what life is in the context of human rights. The right to life is not a right to be a particular conglomeration of biological processes per se. That right is strictly for such conglomerations that are also individual volitional living beings with a functional rational capacity capable of directing their actions in interrelationships with other human beings.
Political rights are not innate. In the absence of an organized society with an independent third party institution to objectify and defend them human beings do not have any political rights at all. They do not exist outside of that context. Outside of that context, there are only moral rights (and wrongs), and on all such questions each individual would be autonomous. When forming a moral government, its sole task must be to preserve for each individual the same autonomy within the society that would exist without it.
Objectified rights are necessitated in that task by the fact that without them, the exercise of autonomy by one could nullify the autonomy of another, because humans are volitional and therefore fallible.
Consequently, rights are defined solely to protect fallible humans from each other in a socio-economic context. Rights are only of use as the terms for that kind of social contract. To be a party of that contract, one needs to be immanently capable of interfering with another’s autonomy, and immanently capable of reciprocating by upholding the terms of the contract. A fetus is neither. A child is both.
No man needs to enter into such a relationship with a fetus tethered within a womb. And one may not enter into such a relationship with a fetus that could conflict with the contract already existing with the woman in and to whom the fetus is tethered.
Ultimately, there are not and cannot be conflicting rights. So long as the mother and fetus are one contiguous human unit, you may not ascribe to that unit two sets of rights to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness, just as you may not ascribe two sets of those rights to conjoined twins until and unless they are separated.
A fetus is not an organism, therefore it is not a human being.
But if it were, a woman who chose to abort would be deserving of life in prison without parole — or execution. Which of those do you advocate?
MichaelM on September 29th, 2008 12:45 am:
“You are wrong about what life is in the context of human rights. The right to life is not a right to be a particular conglomeration of biological processes per se. That right is strictly for such conglomerations that are also individual volitional living beings with a functional rational capacity capable of directing their actions in interrelationships with other human beings.”
a six month old has no “functional rational capacity” therefore you must also support killing six month olds by this standard if the mother decides she does not want it.
SICK!
All men are created equal and they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights. Everything you said was a piss poor attempt at justifying murder and end with the biggest whopper of them all.
“Ultimately, there are not and cannot be conflicting rights. So long as the mother and fetus are one contiguous human unit, you may not ascribe to that unit two sets of rights to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness, just as you may not ascribe two sets of those rights to conjoined twins until and unless they are separated.”
You are correct that rights do not conflict. However no right of the mother is violated by the fact that she is pregnant unless the pregnancy threatens her life. There is no right to be happy or a right to not be pregnant.
Since the beings are separate (they have different traits and separate DNA) you most certainly can ascribe the right to life to both.
You’re whole comment is a terrible waste of space.
vzeebjtf on September 29th, 2008 3:55 am”
“A fetus is not an organism, therefore it is not a human being.”
It’s not?
Webster’s Dictionary: “an individual constituted to carry on the activities of life by means of organs separate in function but mutually dependent : a living being”
“organs” is a very nebulous term and includes the internal cell functions. Single celled bacteria are organisms and so are fertilized eggs.
“But if it were, a woman who chose to abort would be deserving of life in prison without parole — or execution. Which of those do you advocate?”
First degree, premeditated murder gets the death penalty. You do not have the right to take the life of another person who is not threatening your rights. Ever. No matter how emotional you try to make it in order to justify it.
“A fetus is not an organism”
Actually all animals are eukaryotes which is a classification of organism. Bacteria are prokaryotes which is also an organism.
If a bacteria is an organism then a fertilized human egg is also an organism.
It is basic biology that anyone in the medical field knows. The fact that a medical doctor (or someone who claims to be one above) ignores that fact does not surprise me. Most doctors I have worked with don’t know their ass from a whole in the ground and are lost without the nursing staff.
People spend so much time justifying why it is ok to murder a child at any stage of development that it is sickening. But like the author of this piece pointed out it is not unusual for sick people to justify murder. You anti-lifers are in good (bad) company with some of the world’s most vile scum
To the above poster about hair follicles. There is no comparison between a hair and a fertilized egg. You kill a hair you kill a hair. You kill a fertilized egg you kill a human being.
Thank you.
The anti-lifers continue to make up their own rules about when life begins. I work in forensics and here is a little fact. If you gave me the DNA of an embryo to test I could tell you one important thing - that it is a human being.
For me that is all I need to know and science once again punts the anti-lifers in the groin.
As Rand once said, her seminal book, Atlas Shrugged, was a portrayal of how we are best served by adopting a philosophy of what is best for our own rational self-interest is best for society.
What rational self-interest is served by murdering an unborn child? There may be self-interest, but it is not rational when boiled down to all of us having inalienable rights from the moment of creation. If you think that murder can be rational then you have violated every basic principle Rand believed. If murdering one is rational then murdering others is that way too understanding that there is a difference between murder and killing.
Children are not created when they pop out of the womb. Thyy are created when the sperm and egg meet.
Actually ehill, Rand believed in abortion because she violated her own philosophical beliefs as many have over the years when they were inconvenient for them. Rand actually rationalized Abortion as OK because the rights of the living trump the rights of those that are living but not yet born.
The problem for Rand is that there is no right to murder. But like many of the founding fathers rationalized that slavery based on skin color was ok Rand failed her own test. She was not perfect and many of her followers have blindly followed her failed logic because they have not learned to think for themselves and correct the wrongs that came before them.
Fortunately however there are much fewer of them that still believe in abortion than you are lead to believe. I am constantly talking to people who prove that they are libertarian and they reject abortion because they have accepted the truth about it. However there is still that vocal minority that refuse to accept the truth among the libertarian community. There are the same “libertarians” that often decry wars that are fought for just causes too so take them with a grain of salt and realize that they are more wed to rationalizing a preconceived position than accepting truth.