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 Location : Ether-Sphere
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 |  Subject: Maynard Thomson: Knirk is wrong calling libertarians extreme right wing  Mon Jan 10, 2022 8:15 pm | |
| To the editor:
In a Dec. 29 column decrying proposed legislation “banning all New Hampshire entities — including businesses — from mandating COVID vaccines,” Rep. Jerry Knirk (D-Freedom) makes several references demonstrating he needs to take Political Philosophy 101.
He ascribes support for this legislation to “extreme right-wing libertarians,” then repeatedly demonizes “libertarians” for their alleged “approach to COVID.” I’ve no idea what a “right-wing libertarian” is, but I’m confident that no one imbued with (small “l”) libertarian values would support the legislation Rep. Knirk describes. As he says: “It is odd that libertarians wish to restrict the liberty of businesses and organizations from imposing vaccine mandates.”
What’s odd is that Rep. Knirk apparently didn’t see that this line doesn’t condemn libertarians, it rebuts his claim that support for this legislation could possibly come from “libertarians.”
Contrary to Rep. Knirk’s apparent belief, libertarians are in no way some Republican Party variant, “right wing” or otherwise. Indeed, those subscribing to libertarian beliefs tend to view Republican ideology with the same distaste they feel for that of Democrats and all other statists.
Republicans, Democrats, fascists, communists, socialists, prohibitionists, syndicalists and followers of all the other meliorist ideologies believe government exists to advance what they see as history’s intentions — to bring about what progressive President Woodrow Wilson called “God’s purpose on earth,” and what William Buckley condemned as “immanentizing the eschaton” (look it up).
To those imagining themselves among the elite to whom an understanding of The Good has been revealed, the recalcitrant aren’t merely wrong, they’re at best ignorant, but often evil, even satanic. Predictably, these de facto religious convictions routinely lead to disastrous failures and conflict.
In contrast, the libertarian believes government’s sole legitimate purpose is to ensure that each of us is secure from predators, so that, paraphrasing Jefferson, we can exercise unobstructed action according to our will, subject only to limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. To the libertarian, voluntary choices by free people, acting in their individual self-interest, produce as harmonious and productive a society as human action can secure.
That being the case, to the libertarian, a law barring a business from limiting access to those wearing masks is, under almost all conceivable circumstances, an illegitimate use of government — as would be a law requiring businesses to mandate masks, absent compelling evidence that such a law would be the least coercive measure capable of arresting demonstrable interference with the rights of others.
Let Rep. Knirk flail away at Republicans, and others whose use of government to compel adherence to their vision of the good conflicts with his; those embracing libertarian values will hope both sides fail.
Maynard Thomson
Freedom
.https://www.conwaydailysun.com/opinion/letters/maynard-thomson-knirk-is-wrong-calling-libertarians-extreme-right-wing/article_85d7656e-6e54-11ec-8a06-fbe40538ea0f.html |
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