No Libertarians in a Pandemic

35 Replies to “No Libertarians in a Pandemic”

1. As I’ve written before, the federal government of Canada can disappear and the confederation of provinces and their municipalities will thrive. The feds are useless or redundant.
   In the US there are some aspects that are worthwhile and important, like the DOD.
   Every time a citizen says “the government should DO something” they should be made to eat their own excrement.

   1. Yup, because by saying that, they are doing so metaphorically anyway.

   2. In the US, the feds funded massive levy systems, river diverting, etc, that generated many billions in agri revenue for quite a few states.

2. I agree! Canadians would be better off if we eliminated the federal government which only serves the interest of the elite and itself. It has been spectacularly successful in wasting an endless amount of money while thwarting all productive efforts. We just can’t have the wrong people be successful now can we …..

3. Government is become Santa Claus. Takes our money and assumes we love them for giving it back.

   I agree that we would experience very little harm from the unwinding of a federal state.

   However, the vast majority of our fellow citizens would be aghast at the idea. They overflow with ‘what abouts’. What about war and the army, what about the Indian act, what about international treaties—the list is infinite.

4. Coincidentally, I was just saying to my wife that all this talk about gubmints’ ability to secure timely delivery of vaccines – and Baby Doc’s miserable failure – overlooks the question of whether gubmints should actually be performing this role. This minarchist (Rothbardian anarcho capitalist on odd days) sez NO.

   Even standing armies are questionable. Rothbard’s answer to the shocked nay sayer would be that after any invasion, guerrila warfare would destroy the invader. See … well you know.

   Oh, and I’m not a “thank you for your service” guy either. The phrase is puke-inducing. No different than the lady ahead of me at the checkout who gushed to the cashier, Thank you for working.

   1. You must have been behind my wife, she does this all the time, I’ve eye rolled so much that I think I pulled a muscle.

   2. “Even standing armies are questionable.”

      Prior to WWII the role of the regular army in Canada was to train the militia. We had 3 regular battalions and over 100 reserve battalions. Prior to WWI we had one regular battalion and over 100 reserve battalions. In WWI the generals were all reservists. In WWII most were regular army. Since then the regular army spends all it’s time building empires and sabotaging the reserves. We have absolutely no need for anything more than minimal regular forces.

   3. Thank God for barcodes and SELF checkout. I studiously AVOID ever struggling through a COVID checkout line at my local Safeway, where I am routinely scolded for putting my items on an empty belt … because the Checker hadn’t yet cleared me to do so. It takes me 20 minutes to checkout with the assistance of these “essential” workers. It takes no time at the SELF checkout line.

      I suppose SELF checkout was designed by and for … True Libertarians.

   4. The phrase is puke-inducing. No different than the lady ahead of me at the checkout who gushed to the cashier, Thank you for working.

      What? You didn’t open your window early in the evening and bang on some of your kitchen utensils in solidarity and out of gratitude?

      During my second undergrad summer at the oil refinery/gas plant near where I grew up, I worked with some of the maintenance crews. Nobody thanked me for going into hazardous–possibly fatal–environments where there might have been hydrogen sulphide gas or, elsewhere, hydrofluoric acid. It was my job at the time and I got paid for doing it.

      Equally as nauseating is when passengers on a city transit bus loudly thank the driver when the vehicle halts at a requested stop.

      1. I don’t remember the first time I heard that transit thing, but it was after I moved to Calgary. Bit of a WTF moment for me. My wife does it, for which I mostly do silent eye-rolling.

5. Soundbite from Trudeau just now “well the president’s approach on covid closely aligns with Canada’s”. If that’s not usual Trudeau bs then the us is totally screwed.

   1. Except the U.S. actually has the vaccine not just an online order for the vaccine.

      If Horwitz thinks the US gov’t has screwed up, I’m not sure how he’d describe what has happened here.

6. Socialism On A Global Scale. The Great Reset, UN Agenda, Green Communism, Net Zero, The Globalist Elites Agenda Is You Are A SERF who owns nothing. And They Rule Over YOU Aided by the Liberals and the Democrats. What Do You Really Think The Lockdowns Were For. Never in 6000 Years Of Human History. Wake Up Push Back
   https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/socialism-global-scale-sky-news-host-demolishes-davos-elites-and-great-reset-scheme

7. I’m trying to think of legislation not aimed at undoing previous legislated disasters and passed during my lifetime that have been of any value and I’m coming up with nothing. I am OK with anarco-capitalism but for the sake of attempting to convince others, in the past, I have advocated limited minimal government (police, military, courts only) but we are so far from that now that one wonders if those my age that agree will be able to avoid the camps / ovens before likely dying within a decade or two.

   As to the post, I know of no self-respecting libertarian that favours government involvement in health care period, let alone a trumped-up communist-induced “pandemic”. Government “involvement” eventually becomes monopolist player at gunpoint.

   1. … we are so far from that now that one wonders if those my age that agree will be able to avoid the camps / ovens before likely dying within a decade or two.

      But it’s for the planet, John, how could you be so selfish, callous, thoughtless, evil, etc.

8. When “Get off my lawn!” becomes a radical, existential stand for freedom…

9. Liberals (sorry for purism, ok libertarians) and conservatives share one key idea – the essential requirement to limit government.
   Because government left to its own devices becomes authoritarian, then totalitarian, they become unenlightened despots.
   Why? Because when they reach critical mass, where they reach into every aspect of civil society, they exist to sustain themselves.
   To do the public good, however, the idea of limiting government doesn’t obviate government action of only a temporary nature.
   But as Hayek and others point out, that must only happen when the measure proposed has the widest support of society.
   Did covid? Yes, but for the wrong reasons, because the people were misinformed and misled about lockdowns and masks.

   Would we have consented to a year of lockdowns, with no end in sight, with constantly moving goalposts, with a government more like a deer in the headlights, unable to end this horrid state affairs, but unlike the deer with no skin in the game?

   Government must be limited not because it pursues its own interests, but it becomes corrupt, conniving and cunning for its own sake. Kristie Noem’s full speech to CPAC lays out those ideas beautifully. Erosion of individualism is destroying liberty.

   It’s posted on the site, her entire speech. It’s the best and most hopeful thing I’ve heard in a long time. She is one of a long line of young US conservatives coming down the line while Democrats, much like the end of the Soviet regime, are dominated by old dinosaurs, with all the middle moderates taken out, with only radical socialists left, with no Gorbachev in the wings.

   1. I have not “consented” to a year of lockdowns; I have had them forced upon me by government, who now blame all the current and impending economic woes on the virus, not their initial panicked government response to a not too serious influenza outbreak, which they cannot admit to now.

      1. I used that term within the context of “the consent of the governed,” whereby we elect and remove leaders based on their vision for us and programs, not fake promises, outright lies or coercion in league with corrupt media to distort messaging.

   2. I have not “consented” to a year of lockdowns; I have had them forced upon me by government, who now blame all the current and impending economic woes on the virus, not the initial panicked government response to a not too serious influenza outbreak, which they cannot admit to now.

10. This last year has been a real education for those who advocate for Big Government,yet claim they have rights as an individual..
    Surprise surprise..
    The Panicked Bureaucracies showed us all,we have no rights.
    Government knows best,even as they demonstrate they know nothing.
    All those rights,privileges and “freedoms” the government provides?
    Har Har har.

    After 12 months of “Just two weeks of shutdown”,even the most gullible of citizen can see the idiocy and madness flowing out from our “helpers”.
    The penalties and abuse meted out to any citizen who got crosswise of the conflicting directions and utter bullshit uttered by Public Health Authorities (and their political mouthpieces),stands in stark contrast to the absolute pass given to the authoritarian idiots breeching their own rules and to the obvious contradictions and blithering stupidity..

    If you still think that Big is Better in government,wait till you see the bill.
    You think any of the parasitic overload is going to pay for their blunders?
    Or that their numbers might be reduced to take some of the crushing load off of taxpayers?

    We are so FUBARed that current consensus of our Effete Elites is that everyone should have a government job..
    Growing the “economy” from the heart.

11. The problem with the “government is screwing things up so badly that everyone will eventually be unable to ignore just how bad it is” argument is precisely that people can still refuse to see how bad things are, or, worse yet, think that the problem is that the government simply isn’t being tough enough and demand more controls.

    There’s a moral premise behind the lockdowns: your life doesn’t belong to you and you have a duty to sacrifice for the sake of others. This premise still has widespread support.

12. I have a friend who is a Libertarian…he tore up his membership card due to that party’s stance on masks and the pandemic in general. I think his anti-Trumpism beat out logic.

13. those classical liberal/minarchist libertarians who said “well, sure, a pandemic or a public health crisis is one of the few situations where government intervention is justified.”

    Name three.

14. You mean the Official Libertarians won’t allow the State to shove a CCP covid test up their ass?

    When the words ‘literally’ and ‘figuratively’ collide…

15. There are plenty of people who claim to be “libertarians”, when the word they’re really grasping for is: libertines.

    Also there’s a fair bit of confusion respecting the definitions of “conservative” and “liberal”.
    Today’s conservatives are yesterday’s classical liberal.
    Today’s liberals are yesterday’s statist/fascists.
    Plenty of your pseudo-libertarians are going to fall into the latter category.

16. I am a Libertarian and understand his point. I maintain that government is a necessary evil. It performs certain functions that must be performed for civilisation to prosper as we are not all Libertarians and some are psycopathic. But its tendencies still are evil and therefore government powers and roles are to be severly limited

    Thus the usual things a government can do in a Libertarian world are prevention of random violance to person and property; enforcement of the law of contract, all those British common law things. From there, it’s pretty much a toss up of how much a Libertarian you are. The problem with giving more responsibilities to the state or government is that it is an organism that grows, like any other corporate organism, and it has the use of force as a last resort. The US 2nd ammendment is necessary; to prevent tyranny, the people must be able to shoot back.

    Now, I think that public health, in such as water and sanitation, and infectious diseases, is a legitimate, but not inevitable, role for governments. This panic demic has demonstrated how incompetence and the monopoly of the use of force can lead to disasterous outcomes.

    It needn’t be this way. If, perhaps, governments could be limited to a few tasks, rather than try to regulate every aspect of our lives (for our own good, of course), maybe they could be competent. However, since WWI, the government has become a self-proclaimed fount of wisdom and capability.

    Plato is still relevalent here; his ideal society was a totalitarian nightmare where the few, who alone could enjoy all the luxuries of civilization, controlled every behavior of the masses. This was, and is, socialism, or state feudalism, where Nebakaneza would be happpy.The only antidote to this natural tendency of all governments is liberty and defenestration.

    1. OK I am not an “official” libertarian as some are talking about. But I have named three roles for government.

       I haven’t gone into why, but I could if you insisted. In our natural state, there are tribes, tyrannies, protection rackets and rape and theft and war as men are stronger and will protect their own. There is only natural justice, which leads to vendettas and suspicion.

       You see, we are animals with all the natural drives of animals; it is civilization that makes it possible for us to enjoy freedom w/o the fear of ambush.

17. The problem with giving more responsibilities to the state or government is that it is an organism that grows, like any other corporate organism, and it has the use of force as a last resort.

    Robert,

    Where government fails every single day in ways that actually effect individuals isn’t so much in deciding what needs to be done but in how to get those things done once the decisions have been made. In a perfect libertarian world this problem still exists. Decision making and execution are two very separate things. Even if a government makes the right decision (in an area we all agree it has jurisdiction) failure can still and usually does result because of poor execution.

    The decision side of the equation is driven by ideology which we may or may not agree with at any given time but we accept because we accept democracy but the execution side becomes locked in bureaucratic corruption. Actions are taken by people with no skin in the game and nothing to lose when things eventually fail. It seems to me that a libertarian’s time would be better spent on how things do or don’t get done. A separation of powers should include a discussion on what apparatus are used to execute decisions.

18. “And if governments couldn’t get right one of the things that even many libertarians agree is one of its proper roles, well what kind of case is there against a whole bunch of other stuff government does, including the small list of other things minarchist types think government should do?”

    Many, many, years ago, I had my first experience of carefully and completely explaining something to a reporter in terms that a two year old child would understand. Of course, the resulting news article had little to do with what I said, and contained many inaccuracies.

    Since then, I have seen news stories about subjects that I am very familiar with, and have seen them to be utter garbage. Very far from the truth. Oddly, not always in search of sensationalism. It would seem that many journalists, and probably their editors have worse comprehensive abilities than a two year old child. It is the only answer that I can come up with.

    Following the theory that those that can do, those that can’t teach, those that can’t teach become journalists, and those that can’t spell become politicians, it is hardly surprising to me anything the political class touch turns to shit.

    1. It would seem that many journalists, and probably their editors have worse comprehensive abilities than a two year old child.

       Journalists start with a story idea. They know what they want to say and they go in search of information that either supports their idea or can be made to look like it supports their idea. They won’t pursue anything they don’t have a preconceived idea about. If you start with that premise you can see that their comprehensive abilities are good enough to make something fit the narrative.

19. “I forgot to mention that this guy also has a severely compromised immune system due to cancer treatments. As such his words carry more weight than that of the average person. If he gets covid it’s likely a death sentence.”

    Bullshit. Was in the same situation this time last year. COVID is rarely a death sentence, don’t pretend it is, you are playing into the narrative. I was out and about right through my treatments. I am sure my wife and daughter had it in Dec 2019. I never did.
    Stop it.
    COVID is the the flu renamed.
    How many died of influenza last year, yes correct, no one.
    Scamdemic.
    All known good cheap treatments, HCQ, Ivermectin, etc, look it up, suppressed to push vaccines that who knows what’s in them.
    At the cost of billions.
    Now we will have COVID “passports” which will expand no doubt into a social credit score system.
    Just say no.
    Why is the snake Trudeau hiding while selling out the country?
    He is afraid of being shot.
    I wonder how many attempts have been made that are not reported,.
    Real Canadians not getting credit.
    That cocksucker needs to go.

    1. We need an election and O’Toole needs to step up.
       The country is at stake.

20. Canadians talk a big line about freedom, but start mentioning legalizing cocaine, getting rid of all firearms regulations, and letting folk distill and sell booze from their basements, buying a cow to sell milk to your neighbors, or driving a car without plates, well, they all go rushing back to gushing about how much we need the state…for the children, no less.