Are Libertarians pacifists? (user search)
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  Are Libertarians pacifists? (search mode)
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Question: Are Libertarians pacifists?
#1
Yes
 
#2
No
 
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Total Voters: 27

Author Topic: Are Libertarians pacifists?  (Read 7925 times)
Nym90
nym90
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« on: September 24, 2004, 12:34:08 AM »

No.

They are not necessarily pacifists, but they often can be.

But my understanding is that most Libertarians favor a citizen militia or something that would defend the homeland if attacked.

DING DING DING! We have a winner.

Yes, there are many reasons libertarians are not pacifists. Of course, there are pacifist libertarians, but these are not the norm(there are pacifist conservatives too). The more appropriate term for your general libertarian is non-aggressionist. Pacifists advocate that violence should be used for no reason, even self-defense.

Our stance on gun rights is also evidence we aren't pacifists - if you think libertarians are pacifists I dare you to break into Michael Badnarik's house while he is there. You'd see just how non-pacifist he is. Wink

As far as war goes, we are, as I said earlier, non-interventionists for the most part. If attacked, we are perfectly willing to defend the country and retalliate against attackers(I had no problem taking down the Taliban since they were the primary harborers of Al Queda, who did attack us). Also, aren't we the ones constantly saying we need to be ready to overthrow tyrannical government if it comes to us?

Now, on to isolationism - as I said, libertarians are generally non-interventionist, and there is a big difference. Isolationist countries, like Japan was before the U.S. Navy forced them to open trade at gunpoint, do not trade with outsiders and do not welcome outsiders into their borders, as well as not going out into the world themselves. The general libertarian philosophy involves free trade with as many nations as possible and a more open immigration policy, but at the same time not 'policing the world' with our military. I hope the difference is clear.

My policy is slightly less non-interventionist, but still in line with libertarian principles. The biggest mistake made by the old League of Nations was to appease Hitler by ignoring his first few invasions of other countries. It is clear to me that a country that violates the sovereign borders of another nation for the sake of conquest(or some other tyrannical reason, and no, I don't think the U.S. invasion of Iraq was tyrannical, just perhaps bad policy) will not respect the sovereign borders of other nations, therefore they won't respect OUR borders. By ignoring tyrannical conquest, we allow tyrants to become powerful enough to challenge us(as Hitler did). Had Japan not attacked Pearl Harbor(giving us reason to enter WWII) we may very well be living under a Nazi regime today, because once done suppressing Europe, Hitler would have eventually moved at us. So, I think wars against countries that invade other countries for tyrannical reasons are fine and justified(which is why Saddam should have been taken out the first time we kicked the crap out of him). If there were just one or two tyrants in the worlds, I'd say we should just take them out to save ourselves future trouble, but unfortunately there are too many and we must pick our battles wisely.

I would say that I agree with you pretty much 100% on foreign policy. Though I'm a little more interventionist in that I support the removal of dictators from power if we can get a sufficient coalition (basically enough to tip a cost/benefit analsys in our favor...getting rid of dictators is good, but it's mighty expensive in terms of both lives and dollars), and if the motives of the President can be trusted (truly doing it for the good of humanity and not for money). I tend to look at each situation on a case-by-case basis rather than have a completely blanket policy.
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