Essentials, Kids

Yesterday, I read this article in Financial Times asserting "the unmourned end of libertarian politics". It's a load of bloody bollocks. Right off the bat: if we're really seeing "the end of libertarian politics", it's not located where that fool says it is. In fact, it's coming at the hands of so-called "neolibertarians" (stealing a concept for portage to democracy) and "left libertarians" (stealing a concept for the value of its implied connotation) and in the generally-tossed symbol-salad that has taken the place of language (the application of precise percepts -- "words" -- as referents of reality).

Jeffrey Tucker dismisses that idiotic article in three sentences of plain truth, which I was too goddamned disgusted to post here, on my own.

Note: I linked to the "Free To Choose" episodes, below. I'd thought about it, and held my hand, but now I won't: Milton Friedman is for beginners. This is broad-stroke baby-stuff and should be taken with great care, because there is no morality in it. It is sheerly utilitarian. It is important to understand, for instance, that there is nothing "libertarian" in Friedman's idea of "school vouchers". Read this:

"Governments could require a minimum level of education which they could finance by giving parents vouchers redeemable for a specified maximum sum per child per year is spent on 'approved' educational services."

(Milton Friedman -- "The Role Of Government In Education", 1955 -- .pdf) Understand, ladies and gentlemen, that:

• Nobody in the world has the right to "require a minimum level of education" of anyone else, no matter how ardently they believe that it would be a good thing. And this means that they cannot delegate to anyone else something -- this implicit right -- that they do not originally possess.
  
  
• The allegation of government "finance" here entails nothing more or less than taking away from people by main force or its implicit or explicit threat something that already belongs to them by right -- their productivity -- only for the purpose of giving it back to them on the presumptuous condition that they behave themselves with it, disposing it in a way that the government dictates. This is not "finance". This is kabuki extortion.

As for the FT article: all the same goes for this craptacular nonsense about "individual health care accounts".

Now; anyone can call themselves any bloody thing that they want to, but nobody who endorses anything like this stands for freedom. Get yourself adept with distinguishing essentials, and hurry up about it. Don't go about uttering nonsense and making a fool of yourself.