Tom D invited some interesting clarifications in my previous article, and DavidtheBarbarian suggested my response ought to be an article unto itself. I am going to just copy and paste the comment and add some light edits and additional thoughts which came to me after the fact. In writing this I realized my additional thoughts expanded substantially so I took them out and put them in their own article, to follow.
Thank you, all, for the ever interesting discussion here at the Times-Dispatch!
Tom D, Let me answer your question with a question: If you don’t think your beliefs are so good everyone should have them, why do you have those beliefs?
Consider it using game theory.
Player A has an idea which he believes is a good idea, he thinks it accomplishes some arbitrary goal, he thinks it would accomplish some arbitrary goal faster if other people shared it.
Player B has an idea which he believes is a good idea, he thinks it accomplishes some arbitrary goal, but he does not think he should tell other people about it.
In the pursuit of some arbitrary goal, who do you think will accomplish their goal faster? Which idea do you think will survive longest? Probably the idea professed by Player A, right?
Now introduce Player C, who has an idea which he believes is a good idea, but his idea is to prevent the completion of the above referenced arbitrary goals, and he would more effectively prevent that goal if other people shared his idea.
Which Player has a chance at still accomplishing their goal? Player A has a fighting chance, because Player A is playing the same game as Player C: persuading people to share their idea. Player B is not playing the same game, and will be ignored and irrelevant to the pursuit of some arbitrary goal.
If the arbitrary goal is “Social stability” or “maximum freedom” or “virtuous society” or “high taxes” then people who take the Player A strategy will be in a position to increase their goal, or people who take the Player C strategy will be in a position to prevent that goal. Player B strategy will not move the marker on social stability, maximum freedom, virtuous society, or high taxes.
All that being said: There’s no neutral policies either. All policies–or ideas, or positive decisions of any kind–are by their very nature exclusive of things that violate those policies. The only reason some policies might seem neutral, it’s because there is a common cultural agreement that they are sensible. Take a law prohibiting murder: By definition, this law is restrictive and oppressive to murderers, but because society already agrees that murder is a bad thing, there’s no debate about it. When you take a more hotly contested legal situation–let’s say, Carbon taxes–then if it was implemented then it would be totally unoppressive to people who support the carbon tax, and totally oppressive to people who oppose it. All law of any kind is a discriminating dichotomy against somebody or something.
The desire to implement policies that preserve and maximize freedom is “classical liberalism”, of which I described Libertarians as the archetype, in the OP. My stance, and the stance I profess on this blog, is contra Classical Liberalism. This makes me unpopular among both right-liberals (republicans/conservatives) and left liberals (democrats/progressives) for different reasons. For a little more thorough discussion of this, see this article of mine which answers this question neatly.
AMDG
Times-Dispatch of Vichy Earth 