Bloodthirsty ‘Libertarians’

The libertarian non-aggression axiom is the essence of libertarianism. Remove this axiom, and libertarianism may as well be libraryism, or vegetarianism. Thus, if a person is to be a libertarian, he need to, he totally must, in my opinion, be able to distinguish aggression from defense.

Here’s a joke. Do you know the difference between a bathroom along with a living room? No? Well, don’t come to my house. In this spirit I ask, which are the difference between offense and defense? Between aggression and defense against aggression? No? Well, then, don’t call yourself a libertarian.

I can’t read any person from the libertarian movement. No one appointed me guardian of this honorific. I’m just giving my humble opinion. In like manner, if you couldn’t tell the difference between a hammer and a chisel, I wouldn’t take into consideration you a carpenter. In case you couldn’t distinguish between a brush and paint, I wouldn’t consider a painter. In a lot the same way, if you cannot tell offense and defense apart, that’s, if you believe in pre-emptive strikes against those people who are not attacking you, then I can’t contemplate you a libertarian even though you favor free enterprise and oppose criminalizing voluntary adult conduct.

You will find areas in which well meaning and knowledgeable libertarians disagree: minarchism vs. anarchism; immigration; abortion; inalienability; punishment theory. Despite the fact that I’ve powerful views on all of these, I recognize libertarian arguments on the other side. But not on this problem.
You don’t have to wait until I in fact punch you within the nose to take violent action against me. You do not even have to wait until my fist is at a yard of you, relocating your direction. Even so, should you haul off and punch me in the nose in a preemptive strike, on the floor that I could possibly punch you in the future, then you might be an aggressor.

Suppose you were a Martian, searching down upon our planet, trying to figure out which earth nations were aggressors, and which were not. You’ve especially very good eyesight. So much in fact, that it is possible to see actual uniforms, flags, etc. You notice that 1 country, call it Ruritania, has soldiers about the territory of scores of other nations, and sailors in most ocean known to man, and some totally unknown.

You discern that a different country, Moldavia, has its own armed forces in but just a few countries apart from itself. And that is it. No other country has foreign military bases. Exactly what do you conclude? For those who are a rational Martian, you deduce that Ruritania to some excellent degree, and Moldavia to a lesser one, are aggressor nations.

Suppose that your Martian eyesight also allows you to read earthling history books. There you learn that Ruritania fought worldwide wars twice within the last century, and has physically invaded, oh, give or take, about 100 countries in that time. Further, that Ruritania was the only nation inside the entire good reputation for the world to have utilised an atom bomb on men and women; worse, that they used this satanic device on civilians, not even soldiers; that they did so to obtain an unconditional surrender from a country they pushed and hounded into war in the first place.

Who would you feel was the rogue nation? Who does you believe was a danger to the entire world? Who would you believe was an aggressor?

But wait. Let’s attempt to reconcile legalizing victimless crimes with not being able to tell the distinction between initiation of violence and defense against it. Why legalize heroin, or alcohol for that matter? Surely it’s true that those who begin using these substances are additional likely to commit crimes than those who do not.

Should you genuinely have confidence in preemptive strikes against people today not involved with a “clear and present danger,” then how can you justify legalization? Surely, to be logically consistent, you’d need to throw in jail all those that use addictive drugs.

Nor need we hold on there. It just so occurs that young males commit proportionately much more crimes of violence than every other cohort of the population. Under the preemptive strike philosophy, we’d be justified in putting all of them in jail, say, once they turn 15, and allowing them to out when they reach 25. Thus, when the preemptive striker were logically coherent, not just could he not be a libertarian in foreign policy, he couldn’t favor this philosophy even in this region.