- Messages
- 46,751
- Location
- United states
"In challenging statist arguments, therefore, libertarians need to rethink their debating strategy in two ways. First, we need to be emphatic in shifting the burden of proof back onto the shoulders of the statists, i.e. statists should have to demonstrate why they are justified in taking what we already have. Second (and as a result of this) justifications for liberty should be thought of not as proving our own rights to self-ownership and private property but as denying the rights of others over your person and property, with your rights prevailing by default. In other words, our arguments should be primarily defensive rather than offensive. Each of these endeavours can be accomplished regardless of whether one approaches liberty from a natural law or a utilitarian/economic angle, or from argumentation ethics."
The thing is, is they wont even make arguments. They shame and berate and mock people who oppose their statism. So they absolutely fail to establish why they have the right to anything owned by someone else.
Mostly when I read these people bitching among themselves about people who oppose socailism....they go to these ridiculous extremes that if we had our way we would privatize fire depts.....so to them, it's either the state is entitled to everything we have or no one has any community resources. Their arguments are completely insane. They are mostly not even to go deep enough to have a meaningful discussion about why the state is entitled to us or an honest discussion of the massive failure of socailism or why you CANNOT be a supporter of liberty and a socailist.
"But in any case, the matter actually goes far deeper than the mere ability to win debates. As we shall see in this section, the integrity of truth and knowledge itself – not only the ideas we have but how we think about ideas – is intimately bound up with the status of property rights. The slow corruption of standards of knowledge has been an intimate part of the statist erosion of liberty and how we think about the relationship of the state and the individual. Thus, reclaiming standards of knowledge – of which apportioning the burden of proof is a part – should be seen as an integral part of the fight for freedom."
The thing is, is they wont even make arguments. They shame and berate and mock people who oppose their statism. So they absolutely fail to establish why they have the right to anything owned by someone else.
Mostly when I read these people bitching among themselves about people who oppose socailism....they go to these ridiculous extremes that if we had our way we would privatize fire depts.....so to them, it's either the state is entitled to everything we have or no one has any community resources. Their arguments are completely insane. They are mostly not even to go deep enough to have a meaningful discussion about why the state is entitled to us or an honest discussion of the massive failure of socailism or why you CANNOT be a supporter of liberty and a socailist.
"But in any case, the matter actually goes far deeper than the mere ability to win debates. As we shall see in this section, the integrity of truth and knowledge itself – not only the ideas we have but how we think about ideas – is intimately bound up with the status of property rights. The slow corruption of standards of knowledge has been an intimate part of the statist erosion of liberty and how we think about the relationship of the state and the individual. Thus, reclaiming standards of knowledge – of which apportioning the burden of proof is a part – should be seen as an integral part of the fight for freedom."
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