LIBERTARIANISM: ONE VIEW
Michelson, P.E.
L I B E R T A R I A N I S M : O N E V I E W BY P. E. Michelson I. The purpose of this essay is to sketch a political position, libertarianism, in an attempt to inform, stimulate, and...
...But I have incurred the wrath of the Bath, a hollow woman with porcelean skin, to w h o m I say: "It, might have been," and jump right in with held breath knowing whaT, and noT to expecT...
...There's never a storm, and with eyes closed I sing in the bath-tub ring...
...then, upon the slightest resistance, at the first word of complaint, to be repressed, fined, vilified, annoyed, hunted . . ." A most obvious example of the government as aggression is the draft...
...IV...
...The libertarian's prime concern is for human liberty...
...To this end, he seeks a minimum of coercion...
...H e sees individualism as a principle of social order...
...One final caveat is that m y own peculiar ideas are not to be taken as necessarily definitive of libertarianism...
...To the collectivist liberal the current draft is wrong, but only because it is "discriminatory...
...The water is warm...
...All would be well if the draft were made "random" or if a system of com(Continued on Page 12) T H E W E D D I N G B A N D BY Stojan Tesich If the river of life were m y wife, and I its married man, why I don't think that I should feel a necessity to scan whither it goes, or whether, the water, is too cold for a swim...
...I must repeat and keep on insisting, that I would never ford her coarse affording of course she let m y feet: diP into It...
...Liberty m a y be defined as "that condition of m e n in which coercion of some by others is reduced as much as possible in society...
...Even if in a forgotten nook a mistress I had: a shallow brook who churned and twisted, laughing and hissing...
...Space does not permit a comprehensive defense of the position, thus what follows is perforce a collection of conclusions or theses...
...Consequently, the libertarian views government, large social and economic combinations, and other such behemoths with apprehension...
...L I B E R T A R I A N I S M : O N E V I E W BY P. E. Michelson I. The purpose of this essay is to sketch a political position, libertarianism, in an attempt to inform, stimulate, and challenge...
...prevented, reformed, redressed, corrected . . . fleeced, exploited,, monopo^zed, extorted from, exhausted, hoaxed, robbed...
...To the conservative the draft is an obligation, one's "patriotic duty...
...The absurdity of such a scheme becomes apparent when the totalitarian Hitler is depicted as the antithesis of the totalitarian Soviet regime...
...The libertarian believes with Benjamin Tucker, the 19th century American political thinker, that, "The history of humanity has been largely one lone and gradual discovery of the fact that the individual is the gainer by society exactly in proportion as society is free, and of the law that the condition of a permanent and harmonious society is the greatest amoimt of individual liberty compatible with equality of liberty...
...First of all, for the benefit of those who are made comfortable by neat categorization, let m e state that it is not possible for libertarianism to be placed on the customary "right-left" schematic representation of the political spectrum...
...To be governed," says Proudhon, "is to be watched, inspected, spied, directed, law-ridden, regulated, penned up, indoctrinated, preached at, checked, appraised, sized, censured, commanded, by beings who have every operation, every transaction, every movement noted, registered, coimted, rated, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, refused, authorized, indorsed, admonished...
...If a diagram is necessary, we might adopt F. A. Hayek's triangle: conservatives in one comer, socialists and collectivists in another, and libertarians in a third...
...I'd jump right in and drink of It...
...Big busmesses, big unions, oppressive police and the like must also be dealt with, of course, but they are currently lesser evils in that you cannot be charged with sedition or treason for opposing a big business or union...
...Since, in our time, government (aided by the "military-industrial complex") is the pervasive centralizing and coercive force (consider, for instance, national data banks, proliferating national agencies, the draft), it is the libertarian's prize foe...
...The libertarian sees government as aggression...
...II...
Vol. 2 • May 1969 • No. 4
