I'm a Libertarian, not a Republican, but I still love it.
And:
VOTE FOR THE LIPSTICK
NOT FOR THE DIPSTICK
HT: ARRA News Service
UPDATE: Danielle, in the comments, has convinced me that there can be no reconciliation between believing that people have a right to live and being a Libertarian. Thank you, Danielle. I will be registering Republican first thing after the election.
18 comments:
Just curious, because you're a "libertarian", how you can be such a staunch advocate against a woman's right to choose? I assume, if you are in fact an avid Libertarian, that you are familiar with the indespensable notion of self-ownership. How can you deny this inalienable tenet of Libertarianism? (I do want to state that my comment is based on the assumption that you believe that abortion should be illegal. I thought as much was clear from your posts, but if that is not the case, and you are just personally against abortion, this post would not be applicable.)
Danielle, one of the basic tenets of libertarianism is personal responsibility. Which means that Libertarians are pretty evenly divided on whether abortion is about "a woman's right to choose" or a parent's responsibility to a child.
See The Libertarian Case Against Abortion.
The government has limited duties, one of which is to step in when somebody is trying to kill an innocent party who is totally dependent upon them. And it's also NOT government's job to sanction parents killing their own offspring because they don't want to shoulder the responsibilities.
So no, not all Libertarians agree with you that it's okay to kill somebody else just because they're younger, smaller, and totally dependent upon you. And if you can show me where that's a Libertarian principle, I'd be very surprised.
I think that being a pro-life libertarian conjures up some basic problems with the compatablity of the two ideologies. And I'm not the only one. I'm familiar with the Pro-life Libertarian argument, I just don't see it as being very well thought out.
For one, the notion of self-ownership and property rights do not jive well with not being allowed to control one's own body. If a woman, or a man, is in control of one's own body, and owns their body, and all the fruits of their body, including their thoughts, labor, ect, it is logical to conclude from this that they also own their reproductive organs.
If the answer to this statement is that the fetus is a human being (which I do not dispute), and they therefore have their own rights, are they entitled to the right to dwell inside a body which does not want them? If that is the case, are the poor and homeless then able to dwell inside the property of another without their permission (in cases where this would mean life or death)? A Libertarian's answer would obviously be "no" to the later, so why is it not "no" to the former?
(Not to pick on you, per se, I just have had limited dialogue with Pro-Life Libertarians and wonder about the compatibility of the two ideologies.)
Danielle, let's start with your property rights argument. If I find a squatter in my building, I have the right to EVICT him, but not to KILL him. I only have a right to use lethal force if he is an actual threat, not if I just want his absence. This is doubly so if the person who is on my property did not come to be there of his own volition.
If I was dating somebody who just deserted his kids in my living room, I'd have no right to say, "I don't want these kids in my house" and blow their heads off with a shotgun. I'd have a RESPONSIBILITY to call CPS and tolerate the presence of those kids for however long it took CPS to come and take them away, even if that meant that with CPS being overloaded with their caseload it really screwed up my plans.
Add to the mix the fact that the person being killed in an abortion is the woman's OWN child, not some stranger's child who's been dumped on her. Your property rights to your house don't mean you can shoot your kids if you decide you no longer want them in your house. You can't just call CPS and unload them. You have responsibilities to them. Your "ownership" rights to your body do not give you any right to kill your own child, somebody you are responsible for. Your rights end where the child's body begins, just as Abby Hensel would have no right to decide she's tired of being a conjoined twin and wants Britty killed so she can have an independent life.
I would have reiterate what I said to begin with. Your right to evict those trespassers is yours whether or not your eviction would cause them to die. Just as a woman's "eviction" of the child within her womb, whether or not that would cause the child to die. That child cannot survive without the mother's body. If the woman wants the baby out, and does so, then the baby dies.
Now obviously adoption is an option which parallels this argument. If you want the baby out of your body and don't want the child, but don't mind the invasion for 9 months, you are free to let the baby stay in your womb for 9 months and then abandon it. There's no problem there, right? So this must not be about responsibility, per se.
Do you really believe you have a right to eject a helpless person from your property, knowing he or she will die?
So that means if you are boating, and somebody who had fallen off another boat climbs into yours, you think you have the right to toss him back into the lake to drown? If you go to your hunting cabin in the woods, and find a couple of hikers who got lost and had broken in to seek shelter from the bitter cold, you'd have a right to throw them out, knowing they'd freeze to death?
Do you really believe that property rights trump life? I'm not talking about a homeowner finding an aggressor in his bedroom. I'm talking somebody who had noplace else to go or he would die, taking shelter on your property, you believe you have the right to toss him out, to his death?
Do I believe property rights trump life?
I think that's a little bit of a strawman.
But i will answer.
Do I have the right to eject a homeless person from my house, even if that means he/she will die?
Yes, of course I do.
Would I eject that person?
No, of course not.
But these aren't the same question, which is why you can't deduce the first question from the second.
I do have the right to absolute control of my property, yes. I think that's a fundamental Libertarian principle.
Can you show me a solid Libertarian argument that property rights are the supreme right, trumping even human life?
Can you also show me a solid Libertarian argument that there are no responsibilities, only rights?
I just gave you a Libertarian argument that property rights are a supreme right. But, if you need more information on the matter, reading Locke, Montesquieu, or Ayn Rand would give you solid information on property rights being absolute.
A statement from the Libertarian Party's website could help too:
"Recognizing that abortion is a sensitive issue and that people can hold good-faith views on all sides, we believe that government should be kept out of the matter, leaving the question to each person for their conscientious consideration."
As far as your comment on responsibilities go, again, I see this as another logical fallacy. In no way did I say that there are no responsibilities. You have many responsibilities. But giving control over your body to the federal government, not giving a child up for adoption, not giving yourself access to the morning after pill, ect. None of those are in any way Libertarian notions of responsibility.
I don't understand how someone can be against the morning after pill. At this stage of pregnancy, there is no fetus, no baby, no heartbeat. It is merely the joining of two cells. If someone wants to stop this cell from transforming into a fetus in its future development, then there should be no problem with that. If you do think it is such an abolishment to stop this egg before it has started to grow, then I assume that you also think that your own menstrual cycle is also just as vile. How dare your body let go of all those eggs that COULD have turned into babies!
Danielle, you're only addressing Libertarians on "property rights" as they "apply" to abortion -- that the mother has an absolute "property right" over her body to "evict" her baby.
Where is there a Libertarian putting forth that property rights UNIVERSALLY trump all other rights? And where is there a Libertarian putting forth that Libertarianism does not recognize responsibilities?
In order for your "property rights" justification to hold water, Libertarians would have to hold both: that 1. Property rights are supreme, over all other rights, and 2. There is no such thing as personal responsibility.
If property rights do NOT trump all other rights, then we'd have to explore at which point your property rights trump somebody else's life.
If there ARE responsibilities, we'd have to explore the parameters of personal responsibility and whether or not they include protecting your children from death, which you seem to be claiming they do not.
Jessie, you're making a few assumptions:
1. That the value we place on human life depends on how sophisticated, large, or capable the human being in question is.
2. That reducing the perceived risks of sexual intercourse in tenuous situations will NOT increase the frequency of sexual intercourse in tenuous situations.
So let's address them:
1. You are free to choose to place a sliding-scale of value on human life, holding that the bigger, more mature, and more biologically sophisticated you are, the greater value there is to your life. But recognize that for many of us, that is not the case. "Blood," as they say, "is thicker than water." The fact that the newly-conceived human being is part of the human family is enough. We don't have some yardstick he or she has to measure up to, or hoops he or she has to jump through, to prove to us his or her worthiness. His or her mere existence is enough.
2. There's no evidence that access to technology that reduces the perceived risks of ill-considered sexual activity reduces pregnancy. Rather, evidence is to the contrary. And this holds true of all human behaviors: If you reduce the perceived cost, the frequency of an act will increase.
So you achieve nothing but putting money in the pockets of the people who produce the MAP. Statistically, every place the MAP has been introduced, the pregnancy and abortion rates have gone up, because the amount of ill-considered sexual activity has skyrocketed due to the perception that the risk of pregnancy is all but eliminated by the MAP.
I thought I thoroughly addressed this.
Read Montesquieu, Rand or Locke for a Libertarian perspective on the fact that property rights are not only absolute, but are the most supreme right.
Now I never said that Libertarians don't recognize responsibilities. But Libertarians don't believe that responsibilities should be mandated by government. In fact, their belief is that the individual reaps the consequences of their action, and if that action is shirking their responsibilities, then that is what they have to live with, but, again, Libertarians want the government out of it.
Now, I don't believe that it is logical to deduce that the "property rights" justification requires any statement on the existence of responsibility. I believe it is enough to state that Libertarian ideology holds that government should stay out of this arena.
(Also, on your last point, I don't believe that anyone can logically argue that responsibility entails protecting your children from death. My seven week old daughter passed away in her sleep -SIDS- on Christmas morning of '07. I in no way shirked my responsibility. So I can't say that responsibility entails protecting anyone from death. I just don't think that's possible)
Okay, if you're right, then the following are true:
1. Libertarians hold that if you go to your hunting cabin and find an injured, lost child who had sought shelter from a blizzard there, you're totally within your rights to toss that lost and injured child out into the snow to die.
2. Libertarians hold that you can do the same to your own kids -- just toss them out the door into a blizzard to freeze to death -- for no other reason than you've simply decided that you don't want them in the house.
3. Libertarians hold that if you inherit a piece of property, and there's a bedridden elderly lady living there, you have no obligation to go through any sort of eviction process; you can just physically pick her up and toss her out the window to die of injuries and exposure.
4. That if there's a car crash, and a child is ejected from the vehicle and lands on your lawn, you not only have no obligation to call 911 for that child, you have every right to pick him up and toss him onto the road into the path of oncoming traffic just to get him off your property.
5. That if somebody has a seizure and lands on your lawn, you have the right to kick them into the gutter to get them off your lawn, even if that means they will get run over and killed by the snowplow heading up the road.
6. You have no obligation whatsoever to provide your own children with food and shelter. If you want to stick them in a closet and allow them to die of neglect, that's totally within your rights; they're your kids and it's your closet.
And if THAT is being a Libertarian, then you're right, I'm not one.
1. yes.
2. yes
3. yes
4. yes
5. yes
6. yes
Now that doesn't mean that I would do any of those things, but that I could, if I wished to.
And you're right. You're not a Libertarian if you want the government to regulate a woman's actions because she is pregnant. What's next, having the government choose what she eats? Having them force her to go to the doctor? Charging her with negligent homicide if she miscarries?
All of these would be legal possibilities if one were to consider her merely a vessel for the other human being inside of her who is helpless.
It is for these reasons that Libertarians are pro-choice. Not necessarily because we want women to have abortions...I love/loved both of my children and would not wish for a moment I didn't have them...but because we recognize that the government has no ability to regulate my actions.
"One method of destroying a concept is by diluting its meaning. Observe that by ascribing rights to the unborn, i.e., the nonliving, the anti-abortionists obliterate the rights of the living."
-Ayn Rand
I'm guessing that your original intent was to convince me that as a Libertarian, I had to embrace abortion. Instead you convinced me that as somebody who believes that the weak and dependent ought not to be killed, I can no longer be a Libertarian. I will be registering Republican after the election.
Thank you for helping me to put distance between myself and a party of that makes Ebeneezer Scrooge look like Saint Nicholas.
hahaha. thats so funny. i love you Danielle. :)
It's funny, (although it could just be me) but I don't understand people who edit the comments on their blogs. My last comment, which has been removed, simply stated that the most important thing a person can do is to be politically honest.
I did not come into this thread hoping to dissuade you from being Pro-Life. I came in here to reconcile a person's belief which was ideologically inconsistent. I guess ending on that note doesn't make you look as good, Granny, but, again, let's attempt to be honest in all things that we do and say.
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