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Libertarianism

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Politics and government

   Libertarianism is a political philosophy maintaining that every person
   is the absolute owner of his own life and should be free to do whatever
   he wishes with his person or property, as long as he respects the
   liberty of others. There are two types of libertarians. One type holds
   as a fundamental maxim that all human interaction should be voluntary
   and consensual. They maintain that the initiation of force against
   another person or his property, with "force" meaning the use of
   physical force, the threat of it, or the commission of fraud against
   someone who has not initiated physical force, threat, or fraud, is a
   violation of that principle (many of these are individualist anarchists
   or anarcho-capitalists). The other type comes from a consequentialist
   or utilitarian standpoint. Instead of having moral prohibitions against
   initiation of force, these support a limited government that engages in
   the minimum amount of initiatory force (such as levying taxes to
   provide some public goods such as defense and roads, as well as some
   minimal regulation), because they believe it to be necessary to ensure
   maximum individual freedom (these are minarchists). Libertarians do not
   oppose force used in response to initiatory aggressions such as
   violence, fraud or trespassing. Libertarians favour an ethic of
   self-responsibility and strongly oppose the welfare state, because they
   believe forcing someone to provide aid to others is ethically wrong,
   ultimately counter-productive, or both. Libertarians also strongly
   oppose conscription because they believe no one should be forced to
   fight a war they oppose.

   Note on terminology: Some writers who have been called libertarians
   have also been referred to as classical liberals, by others or
   themselves. Also, some use the phrase "the freedom philosophy" to refer
   to libertarianism, classical liberalism or both.

Principles

   Libertarians generally define liberty as the freedom to do whatever one
   wishes as long as one respects others. At the point of interference,
   each party would become subject to certain principled rules for
   adjudicating disputes, which emphasize restitution to the victim rather
   than punishment or retribution alone. Some libertarians allow that such
   sanctions are properly imposed by a state in the form of criminal or
   civil penalties, though many of these dispute the degree to which such
   punishment is necessarily a state function.

   Libertarians generally view constraints imposed by the state on persons
   or their property (if applicable), beyond the need to penalize
   infringement of one's rights by another, as a violation of liberty.
   Anarchists favour no governmental constraints at all, based on the
   assumption that rulers and laws are unnecessary because in the absence
   of government individuals will naturally form self-governing social
   bonds and rules. In contrast, Big-L-Libertarians consider government
   necessary for the sole purpose of protecting the rights of the people.
   This includes protecting people and their property from the criminal
   acts of others, as well as providing for national defense.

   Libertarians generally defend the ideal of freedom from the perspective
   of how little one is constrained by authority, that is, how much one is
   allowed to do, which is referred to as negative liberty. This ideal is
   distinguished from a view of freedom focused on how much one is able to
   do, which is termed positive liberty, a distinction first noted by John
   Stuart Mill, and later described in fuller detail by Isaiah Berlin.

   Many libertarians view life, liberty, and property as the ultimate
   rights possessed by individuals, and that compromising one necessarily
   endangers the rest. In democracies, they consider compromise of these
   individual rights by political action to be "tyranny by the majority",
   a term first coined by Alexis de Tocqueville, and made famous by John
   Stuart Mill, which emphasizes the threat of the majority to impose
   majority norms on minorities, and violating their rights in the
   process. "...There needs protection also against the tyranny of the
   prevailing opinion and feeling, against the tendency of society to
   impose, by other means than civil penalties, its own ideas and
   practices as rules of conduct on those who dissent from them..."

   Some libertarians favour common law, which they see as less arbitrary
   and more adaptable than statutory law. The relative benefits of common
   law evolving toward ever-finer definitions of property rights were
   articulated by thinkers such as Friedrich Hayek, Richard Epstein,
   Robert Nozick, and Randy Barnett. Some libertarian thinkers believe
   that this evolution can define away various "commons" such as pollution
   or other interactions viewed by some as externalities. "A libertarian
   society would not allow anyone to injure others by pollution because it
   insists on individual responsibility."

Natural rights and consequentialism

   Some libertarians such as Robert Nozick and Murray Rothbard view the
   rights to life, liberty, and property as natural rights, i.e., worthy
   of protection as an end in themselves. Their view of natural rights is
   derived, directly or indirectly, from the writings of Thomas Hobbes and
   John Locke. Ayn Rand, another powerful influence on libertarianism,
   despite rejecting the label, also viewed these rights as based on
   natural law.

   Other libertarians such as Milton Friedman, Ludwig von Mises, and
   Friedrich Hayek justified these rights on pragmatic or
   consequentialist, as well as moral grounds. They argued that
   libertarianism was consistent with economic efficiency, and thus the
   most effective means of promoting or enhancing social welfare. They may
   also justify some initiation of force in some situations, such as in
   emergency situations. Some libertarians such as Jan Narveson take the
   contractarian point of view that rights are a sort of agreement
   rational people would make before interacting.

Libertarian policy

   Many libertarians, including the Libertarian Party of the United States
   and New Zealand's Libertarianz Party, consider the Statue of Liberty to
   be an important symbol of their ideas.
   Enlarge
   Many libertarians, including the Libertarian Party of the United States
   and New Zealand's Libertarianz Party, consider the Statue of Liberty to
   be an important symbol of their ideas.

   Libertarians strongly oppose infringement of civil liberties such as
   restrictions on free expression (e.g., speech, press, or religious
   practice), prohibitions on voluntary association, or encroachments on
   persons or property. Some make an exception when the infringement is a
   result of due process to establish or punish criminal behaviour. As
   such, libertarians oppose any type of censorship (i.e., claims of
   offensive speech), or pre-trial forfeiture of property (as is commonly
   seen in drug crime proceedings). Furthermore, most libertarians reject
   the distinction between political and commercial speech or association,
   a legal distinction often used to protect one type of activity and not
   the other from government intervention.

   Libertarians also frown on any laws restricting personal or consensual
   behaviour, as well as laws on victimless crimes. As such, they believe
   that individual choices for products or services should not be limited
   by government licensing requirements or state-granted monopolies, or in
   the form of trade barriers that restrict choices for products and
   services from other nations (see Free Trade). They also tend to oppose
   legal prohibitions on recreational drug use, gambling, and
   prostitution. They believe that citizens should be free to take risks,
   even to the point of actual harm to themselves. For example, while most
   libertarians may personally agree with the majority who favour the use
   of seatbelts, libertarians reject mandating their use as paternalistic.
   Similarly, many believe that the United States Food and Drug
   Administration (and other similar bodies in other countries like Health
   Canada in Canada) shouldn't ban unproven medical treatments, that any
   decisions on treatment be left between patient and doctor, and that
   government should, at most, be limited to passing non-binding judgments
   about efficiency or safety.

   Some Libertarians believe such freedoms are a universal birthright, and
   they accept any material inequalities or wanton behaviour, as long as
   it harms no one else, likely to result from such a policy of
   governmental non-intervention. They see economic inequality as an
   outcome of people's freedom to choose their own actions, which may or
   may not be profitable.

Minarchism and Anarcho-capitalism

   Some who self-identify as libertarians are minarchists, i.e.,
   supportive of minimal taxation as a "necessary evil" for the limited
   purpose of funding public institutions that would protect civil
   liberties and property rights, including police, volunteer armed forces
   without conscription, and judicial courts. Anarcho-capitalists, by
   contrast, oppose all taxation, rejecting any government claim for a
   monopoly of protection as unnecessary. They wish to keep the government
   out of matters of justice and protection, preferring to delegate these
   issues to private groups. Anarcho-capitalists argue that the minarchist
   belief that any monopoly on coercion can be contained within any
   reasonable limits is unrealistic, and that institutionalized coercion
   on any scale is counterproductive.

   The policy positions of minarchists and anarcho-capitalists on
   mainstream issues tend to be indistinguishable as both sets of
   libertarians believe that existing governments are too intrusive. Some
   libertarian philosophers such as Tibor R. Machan argue that, properly
   understood, minarchism and anarcho-capitalism are not in contradiction.

History

   The first known use of a term that has been translated as
   "libertarian," in a political sense, was by anarcho-communist Joseph
   Déjacque who used the French term "libertaire" in a letter to Proudhon
   in 1857. While many anarchists still use the term (e.g., terms
   translatable as "libertarian" are used as a synonym for anarchism in
   some non-English languages, like French, Italian and so on), its most
   common usage in the United States has nothing to do with socialism.

   Instead, libertarianism as a political ideal is viewed as a form of
   classical liberalism, a modern term often used interchangeably with
   libertarianism. This concept, originally referred to simply as
   "liberalism," arose from Enlightenment ideas in Europe and America,
   including the political philosophies of John Locke and the Baron de
   Montesquieu, and the moral and economic philosophy of Adam Smith. By
   the late 18th century, these ideas quickly spread with the Industrial
   Revolution throughout the Western world.

   Locke developed a version of the social contract as rule with "the
   consent of the governed" derived from natural rights. The role of the
   legislature was to protect natural rights in the legal form of civil
   rights. Locke built on the idea of natural rights to propose a labor
   theory of property; each individual in the state of nature "owns"
   himself and, by virtue of their labor, owns the fruits of his efforts.
   From this conception of natural rights, an economy emerges based on
   private property and trade, with money as the medium of exchange.

   At around the same period, the French philosopher Montesquieu developed
   a distinction between sovereign and administrative powers, and proposed
   a separation of powers among the latter as a counterweight to the
   natural tendency of administrative power to grow at the expense of
   individual rights. He allowed as to how this separation of powers could
   work just as well in a republic as for a limited monarchy, though he
   personally preferred the latter. Nevertheless, his ideas fed the
   imaginations of America's Founding Fathers, and would become the basis
   upon which political power would be exercised by most governments, both
   constitutional monarchies and republics, beginning with the United
   States.

   Adam Smith's moral philosophy stressed government non-intervention so
   that individuals could achieve whatever their "God-given talents" would
   allow without interference from arbitrary forces. His economic analysis
   suggested that anything interfering with the ability of individuals to
   contribute their best talents to any enterprise--a reference to
   mercantilist policies and monopolistic guilds--would lead to an
   inefficient division of labor, and hamstring progress generally. Smith
   stated that "a voluntary, informed transaction always benefits both
   parties," such that "voluntary" and "informed" meant the absence of
   force or fraud.

   During the American Revolution, the Founding Fathers of the United
   States substantially enshrined the protection of liberty as the primary
   purpose of government. Thomas Jefferson said that "rightful liberty is
   unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us
   by the equal rights of others."

   The Marquis de La Fayette imported American ideas of liberty, although
   some might say re-imported, in drafting the French Declaration of the
   Rights of Man of 1789, which states:

          Liberty consists in the freedom to do everything which injures
          no one else; hence the exercise of the natural rights of each
          man has no limits except those which assure to the other members
          of the society the enjoyment of the same rights.

   John Stuart Mill, in a reformulation of Jeremy Bentham's notion of
   utilitarianism, stated that, "Over himself, over his own body and mind,
   the individual is sovereign." Mill contrasts this with what he calls
   the "tyranny of the majority," declaring that utilitarianism requires
   that political arrangements satisfy the " liberty principle", whereby
   each person would be guaranteed the greatest possible liberty that
   would not interfere with the liberty of others, so that each person may
   maximize his or her happiness. This ideal would be echoed later by
   English philosopher Herbert Spencer when he espoused the "law of equal
   liberty," stating that "every man has freedom to do all that he wills,
   provided he infringes not the equal freedom of any other man."

   Pierre-Joseph Proudhon advocated an anarchist version of social
   contract which was not between individuals and the state, but rather
   "an agreement of man with man; an agreement from which must result what
   we call society". One of his famous statements is that "anarchy is
   order." In his formulation of mutualism, he asserted that labor is the
   only legitimate form of property, stating "property is freedom",
   rejecting both private and collective ownership of property " property
   is theft!". However, he later abandoned his rejection of property, and
   endorsed private property "as a counterweight to the power of the
   State, and by so doing to insure the liberty of the individual."

   By the early 20th century, mainstream thought in many parts of the
   world began to diverge from an almost exclusive focus on negative
   liberty and free markets to a more positive assertion of rights
   promoted by the Progressive movement in the United States and the
   socialist movement in Europe. Rather than government existing merely to
   "secure the rights" of free people, many began to agitate for the use
   of government power to promote positive rights. This change is
   exemplified by Franklin Roosevelt's Four Freedoms, two of which are
   negative, namely restricting governments from infringing "freedom of
   speech" and "freedom of worship," and two of which were positive,
   declaring a "freedom from want", i.e., government delivery of domestic
   and foreign aid, and a "freedom from fear", i.e., an internationalist
   policy for imposing peace between nations.

   As "liberal" came to be identified with Progressive policies in several
   English-speaking countries during the 1920s and 1930s, many of those
   who espoused the original, minimal-state philosophy began to
   distinguish their doctrine by calling themselves "classical liberals."

   In the early 20th century, the rise of Nazism in Germany and communism
   in Russia were generally seen as distinct movements, with the latter
   bearing more resemblance to the Progressive movement in the West, and
   gaining much sympathy from many of its advocates. A group of central
   European economists called the Austrian school challenged that
   distinction between various brands of totalitarianism by identifying
   the common collectivist underpinning to their doctrines, and claiming
   that collectivism in all its forms is inherently antithetical to
   liberty as traditionally understood in the West. These thinkers
   included Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek, and Walter Block, the
   latter describing the " non-aggression axiom as the linchpin" of
   libertarianism. The Austrian School had a powerful impact on both
   economic teaching and libertarian principles. In the latter half of the
   20th century, the term "libertarian," which had earlier been associated
   with anarchism, came to be adopted by those whose attitudes bore closer
   resemblance to "classical liberals."

   In 1955, Dean Russell wrote an article pondering what to call those,
   such as himself, who subscribed to the classical liberal philosophy of
   individualism and self-responsibility. He said,

          Many of us call ourselves "liberals," And it is true that the
          word "liberal" once described persons who respected the
          individual and feared the use of mass compulsions. But the
          leftists have now corrupted that once-proud term to identify
          themselves and their program of more government ownership of
          property and more controls over persons. As a result, those of
          us who believe in freedom must explain that when we call
          ourselves liberals, we mean liberals in the uncorrupted
          classical sense. At best, this is awkward, subject to
          misunderstanding. Here is a suggestion: Let those of us who love
          liberty trademark and reserve for our own use the good and
          honorable word "libertarian."

Libertarian philosophy in the academy

   Seminars in libertarianism were being taught in the U.S. starting in
   the 1960's, including a personal studies seminar at SUNY Geneseo
   starting in 1972. The Freedom School, later renamed Rampart College,
   was operated by Robert LeFevre during the 1960s and became a
   significant influence in spreading libertarian ideas.

   Philosophical libertarianism gained a significant measure of
   recognition in the academy with the publication of Harvard professor
   Robert Nozick's Anarchy, State, and Utopia in 1974. Left-liberal
   philosopher Thomas Nagel famously argued that Nozick's libertarianism
   was 'without foundations' because Nozick's libertarianism proceeded
   from the assumption that individuals owned themselves without any
   further explanation.

   Jan Narveson aimed to meet this challenge. Based on the work of David
   Gauthier, Narveson developed contractarian libertarianism, outlined in
   his 1988 work The Libertarian Idea, and then extended in his 2002 work
   Respecting Persons in Theory and Practice. In these works, Narveson
   agreed with Hobbes that individuals would lay down their ability to
   kill and steal from each other in order to leave the state of nature,
   but he broke with Hobbes in arguing that an absolute state was not
   necessary to enforce this agreement. Narveson argues that no state at
   all is required. Other advocates of contractarian libertarianism
   include the Nobel Laureate and founder of the public choice school of
   economics James M. Buchanan, and Hungarian-French philosopher Anthony
   de Jasay.

   By contrast, J. C. Lester aimed to undermine the challenge by defending
   libertarianism without foundations in the form of critical rationalist
   libertarianism, most notably in his 2000 work Escape from Leviathan. In
   particular, that work applies critical rationalism to defend the thesis
   that there are no systematic practical clashes among instrumental
   rationality, interpersonal liberty, social welfare and private-property
   anarchy.

Left-libertarians

   There is also a camp of libertarians in American Political Philosophy
   who hold egalitarian principles with the ideas of individual freedom
   and property rights. They call themselves "left-libertarians".
   Left-libertarians believe that the initial distribution of property is
   naturally egalitarian in nature, such that either persons cannot
   legally appropriate property privately and exclusively or they must
   obtain permission of all within the political community to do so. Some
   left-libertarians even use the Lockean proviso in such a way as to
   promote redistributive types of justice in ways seemingly compatible
   with libertarian rights of self-ownership. Some left-libertarians in
   modern times include Peter Vallentyne, Hillel Steiner, Philippe Van
   Parijs, and Michael Otsuka, whose book Libertarianism Without
   Inequality is one of the most egalitarian leaning libertarian texts
   currently in publication.

   Criticisms of left-libertarianism have come from both the right and
   left alike. Right-libertarians like Robert Nozick hold that
   self-ownership and property acquisition need not meet egalitarian
   standards, they must merely follow the Lockean idea of not worsening
   the situation of others. Gerald Cohen, an Analytical Marxist
   philosopher, has extensively criticized left-libertarianism's virtues
   of self-ownership and equality. In his Self-ownership, Freedom, and
   Equality, Cohen claims that any system that takes equality and its
   enforcement seriously is not consistent with the robust freedom and
   full self-ownership of libertarian thought. Tom G. Palmer of the Cato
   Institute has responded to Cohen's critique in Critical Review and has
   provided a guide to the literature criticizing libertarianism in his
   bibliographical review essay on "The Literature of Liberty" in The
   Libertarian Reader, ed. David Boaz.

Objectivism

   Libertarianism's status is in dispute among those who style themselves
   Objectivists (Objectivism is the name novelist Ayn Rand gave her
   philosophy). Though elements of Rand's philosophy have been adopted by
   libertarianism, Objectivists (including Rand herself) have condemned
   libertarianism as a threat to freedom and capitalism. In particular, it
   has been claimed that libertarians use Objectivist ideas "with the
   teeth pulled out of them".

   Conversely, some libertarians see Objectivists as dogmatic,
   unrealistic, and uncompromising. According to Reason editor Nick
   Gillespie in the magazine's March 2005 issue focusing on Objectivism's
   influence, Rand is "one of the most important figures in the
   libertarian movement... Rand remains one of the best-selling and most
   widely influential figures in American thought and culture" in general
   and in libertarianism in particular. Still, he confesses that he is
   embarrassed by his magazine's association with her ideas. In the same
   issue, Cathy Young says that "Libertarianism, the movement most closely
   connected to Rand's ideas, is less an offspring than a rebel
   stepchild." Though they reject what they see as Randian dogmas,
   libertarians like Young still believe that "Rand's message of reason
   and liberty... could be a rallying point" for libertarianism.

   US military operations in Iraq have highlighted the tensions between
   Objectivism and the views of many libertarians. Objectivists have often
   disagreed with the non-interventionism (often misleadingly called "
   isolationism") of many libertarians. They have argued that it is right
   for the state to take pre-emptive military action when the evidence
   suggests a genuine risk that another state will initiate coercive use
   of physical force. Many also would like to see the state more
   aggressively protect the rights of US individuals and corporations
   abroad - including military action in response to nationalization.

   Objectivists reject the oft-heard libertarian refrain that state and
   government are "necessary evils": for Objectivists, a government
   limited to protection of its citizens' rights is absolutely necessary
   and moral. Objectivists are opposed to all anarchist currents and are
   suspicious of libertarians' lineage with individualist anarchism.

Politics of libertarian parties

   Libertarianism is often viewed as a right-wing movement, especially by
   non-libertarians in the United States, where libertarians tend to have
   more in common with traditional conservatives than American liberals,
   especially with regard to economic and gun control policies. However,
   many describe libertarians as being "conservative" on economic issues
   and "liberal" on social issues. (For example, most libertarians view
   Texas congressman and former Libertarian U.S. Presidential candidate
   Ron Paul (R-14) to be a philosophical libertarian, even though he is
   technically affiliated with the Republican Party.)

   A historical example of libertarian politics would be discrimination in
   the workplace. Liberals typically support laws to penalize employers
   for discrimination on a basis unrelated to the ability to do the job
   while conservatives historically favored laws that enforced such
   discrimination (as in the pre-civil rights South). Libertarians could
   be expected to oppose any laws on this matter because these would
   infringe on the property rights or freedoms of either the business
   owner or the just-hired employee. In other words, one should be free to
   discriminate against others in their personal or business dealings
   (within the constraints of principal/agency agreements); one should be
   free to choose where they accept work, or to start one's own business
   in accordance with their personal beliefs and prejudices; and one
   should be free to lead a boycott or publicity campaign against
   businesses with whose policies they disagree.
   While the traditional political spectrum is a line, the Nolan chart
   turns it to a plane to situate libertarianism in a wider gamut of
   political thought.
   Enlarge
   While the traditional political spectrum is a line, the Nolan chart
   turns it to a plane to situate libertarianism in a wider gamut of
   political thought.

   In a more current example, conservatives are likely to support a ban on
   same-sex marriage in the interests of preserving traditional order,
   while liberals are likely to favour allowing same-sex marriage in the
   interest of guaranteeing equality under the law. Libertarians are
   likely to disagree with the notion of government-sanctioned marriage
   itself. Specifically, they would deny that the government deserves any
   role in marriage other than enforcing whatever legal contract people
   choose to enter, and to oppose the various additional rights currently
   granted to married people.

   Instead of a "left-right" spectrum, some libertarians use a
   two-dimensional space, with "personal freedom" on one axis and
   "economic freedom" on the other, which is called the Nolan chart. Named
   after David Nolan, who designed the chart and also founded the United
   States Libertarian Party, the chart is similar to a socio-political
   test used to place individuals by the Advocates for Self Government. A
   first approximation of libertarian politics (derived from these charts)
   is that they agree with liberals on social issues and with
   conservatives on economic issues. Thus, the traditional linear scale of
   governmental philosophy could be represented inside the chart
   stretching from the upper left corner to the lower right, while the
   degree of state control is represented linearly from the lower left to
   the upper right. (See below for criticism of this chart and its use.)

The Libertarian Movement

   The Libertarian Program is an international project to define and
   document key current and potential voluntary replacements of government
   programs.

   Some, such as David Boaz, executive vice president of the libertarian
   U.S think tank, the Cato Institute, argue that the term classical
   liberalism should be reserved for early liberal thinkers for the sake
   of clarity and accuracy, and because of differences between many
   libertarian and classical liberal thinkers. Nevertheless, the Cato
   Institute's official stance is that classical liberalism and
   libertarianism are synonymous; they prefer the term "liberal" to
   describe themselves, but choose not to use it because of its confusing
   connotation in some English-speaking countries (where most
   self-described liberals prefer a mixed economy rather than a free
   market economy). The Cato Institute dislikes adding "classical"
   because, in their view, "the word 'classical' connotes a
   backward-looking philosophy." Thus, they finally settle on
   "libertarian," as it avoids backward implications and confused
   definitions.

   Libertarians and their allies are not a homogeneous group, but have
   collaborated to form think tanks, political parties, and other
   projects. For example, Austrian School economist Murray Rothbard
   co-founded the John Randolph Club, the Centre for Libertarian Studies,
   and the Cato Institute to support an independent libertarian movement,
   and joined David Nolan in founding the United States Libertarian Party
   in 1971. (Rothbard ceased activity with the Libertarian Party in 1985
   and some of his followers like Lew Rockwell are hostile to the group.)
   In the U.S. today, some libertarians support the Libertarian Party,
   some support no party, and some attempt to work within more powerful
   parties despite their differences. The Republican Liberty Caucus (a
   wing of the Republican Party) promotes libertarian views. A similar
   organization, the Democratic Freedom Caucus, exists within the
   Democratic Party, but is less organized. Republican Congressman Ron
   Paul is also a member of the Libertarian Party and was once its
   presidential candidate.

   Costa Rica's Movimiento Libertario (Libertarian Movement) is a
   prominent, non-U.S. libertarian party which holds roughly 10% of the
   seats in Costa Rica's national assembly (legislature). The Movimiento
   Libertario is considered the first libertarian organization to achieve
   substantial electoral success at the national level, though not without
   controversy. For example, Rigoberto Stewart, co-founder of the party
   and founder of "The Limón REAL Project" for autonomy in a province in
   Costa Rica, and director of INLAP , a libertarian think tank, lost his
   influence within Movimiento Libertario and support for "The Limón REAL
   Project". As perhaps explained by Public Choice Theory, while accepting
   money from the Friedrich Naumann Foundation, a German liberal
   foundation, the party compromised on their libertarian principles in
   return for more power, turning to anti-libertarian positions.

   There are other Libertarian parties that have had various amounts of
   success throughout the world. Libertarianism is emerging in France with
   the inception of Liberté Chérie ("Cherished Liberty"), a thinktank and
   activist association that has 2000 members. Liberté Chérie gained
   significant publicity when it managed to draw 80,000 Parisians into the
   streets to demonstrate against government employees who were striking.

   In 2001, the Free State Project was founded by Jason Sorens, a
   political scientist and libertarian activist who argued that 20,000
   libertarians should migrate to a single U.S. state in order to
   concentrate their activism. In August of 2003, the membership of the
   Free State Project chose New Hampshire. However, as of 2005, there are
   concerns over the low rate of growth in signed Free State Project
   participants. In addition, discontented Free State Project
   participants, in protest of the choice of New Hampshire, started rival
   projects, including the Free West Alliance, and North to the Future, a
   project for a Free Alaskan Nation, to concentrate activism in a
   different state or region. There is also a European Free State Project.

Controversies among libertarians

   These controversies are addressed in separate articles:
     * Capitalism: Most libertarians support deregulation and free trade
       because they believe that people should be able to start and grow
       businesses, manufacture, transport, trade, buy, and sell with
       little to no interference from the government. Some may support
       efforts to limit private monopolies. Some libertarians like Milton
       Friedman prefer market reforms like school vouchers to the status
       quo while others like Lew Rockwell see such programs as a threat to
       private industry and as a covert means of expanding government, and
       instead would abolish tax-funded schools altogether.. Many
       left-libertarians define 'capitalism' in its original Marxian sense
       of state capitalism, and therefore oppose it.

     * Taxes: Some libertarians believe that logical consistency to
       fundamental libertarian maxims (non aggression, individual rights)
       allows no taxation at all, while proponents of limited government
       might support low taxes, arguing that a society with no taxation
       would have difficulty providing public goods such as crime
       prevention. See also: Minarchism.

     * Political alliances: Most libertarians ally politically with modern
       conservatives over economic issues and gun laws (but for a
       libertarian defense of gun control, see here ). On many social
       issues, libertarians ally with modern left-wing politics. Foreign
       policy is a hotly debated issue among libertarians, because most
       libertarians oppose wars, against conservative wishes, but also
       oppose the United Nations, against liberal wishes. Others ally with
       isolationist, religious paleoconservatives, despite sharp
       disagreement on economic and social issues. Others refuse to ally
       with any political party other than their own and will never vote
       for a mainstream candidate. Many voting libertarians typically will
       only vote for a candidate that is philosophically libertarian, a
       good example of which in the U.S. is congressman Ron Paul
       (TX-R-14). Those that choose to vote for whichever main party
       matches their goals and ideals are called small-l libertarians (l)
       or "philosophical libertarians" because they are more willing to
       compromise to advance individual liberty. In the 2004 U.S.
       Presidential election, a few "small-l libertarians" advocated
       Howard Dean for President in the primaries because of his belief in
       gun rights and his moderate approval of free trade, and their fear
       of John Kerry and George Bush as even worse political choices.
       Several philosophical libertarians voted for George W. Bush fearing
       John Kerry would be even less in favour of free trade than Bush;
       and others voted for Bush because of the Republican party's claim
       to be the party of smaller government. A smaller minority of
       philosophical libertarians voted for John Kerry, mostly as a
       protest vote against Bush, because of Bush's failure to restrain
       federal spending. A greater number of philosophical libertarians
       either abstained from voting entirely (typically in their belief
       that the Libertarian Candidate for 2004 was poorly-chosen), or
       voted for the 2004 Libertarian Presidential Candidate, Michael
       Badnarik, anyway, believing both major party choices in 2004 were
       opposed to fundamental Libertarian tenets.

     * Intellectual property: Some libertarians believe that property
       rights in ideas (and other intangibles) should be identical to
       property rights in physical goods, as they see both justified by
       natural rights. Others justify intellectual property for
       utilitarian reasons. They argue that intellectual property rights
       are required to maximize innovation. Still others believe that
       "intellectual property" is a euphemism for intellectual
       protectionism and should be abolished altogether.

     * Immigration: Libertarians of the Natural Law variety generally
       support freedom of movement, but other libertarians argue that open
       borders amount to legalized trespassing. The debate often centers
       on self-ownership of bodies and whether we have the freedom to hire
       anyone without the federal government's permission. Other times,
       the debate centers on immigrants abusing tax-funded government
       resources. "Consequentialist libertarians" may decide the issue in
       terms of what is best for the economy. Ideally for a libertarian,
       there would be minimal government involvement in various social
       programs, thus virtually no increased tax burden of immigration.

     * Abortion: A controversy is the role of the state in regulating
       abortion, if it is in fact unethical. In the United States, some on
       both sides of this debate agree that this should be settled by the
       several states instead of the national central government, thereby
       invalidating Roe v. Wade on grounds that it was a centralizing
       decision by the national government violating traditional state
       self-police powers. American libertarians who are not states-rights
       advocates, on the other hand, prefer for the issue to be settled at
       whatever level of government will reach the best decision. Although
       considered to be a minority of libertarians, a significant number
       of libertarians (including many in the Mises Institute) view
       abortion to be an initiation of force against the fetus and
       therefore wrong, while other libertarians view the fetus's early
       stages of development to be under the control of the female or
       individual(s) bearing responsibility for its development. Some
       anarcho-capitalists, including Lew Rockwell and Joe Sobran oppose
       abortion and the centralizing Roe v. Wade decision.

     * Death penalty: Some libertarians support the death penalty on
       self-defense or retributive justice grounds. Others see it as an
       excessive abuse of state power. Many consitutionalist libertarians
       disavow the death penalty for its irreversible nature, as well as
       its perceived conflict with the Bill of Rights' ban on "cruel and
       unusual punishment."

     * Foreign intervention: Most libertarians oppose and are suspicious
       of government intervention in the affairs of other countries,
       especially violent intervention. Others (such as those influenced
       by Objectivism) argue that intervention is not unethical when a
       foreign government is abusing the rights of its citizens but
       whether a nation should intervene depends on its own self-interest.
       Libertarians advocating foreign intervention are typically known as
       "Liberventionists".

     * Gay rights: All libertarians believe that adults have a right to
       choose their own lifestyle or sexual preference, provided that such
       expression does not trample on the same freedom of other people to
       choose their own sexual preference or religious freedom. Yet, there
       has been some debate among libertarians as to how to respond to the
       issues of homosexuality in the armed forces and gay marriage. The
       controversy arises virtually entirely from the current involvement
       of the State in heterosexual marriage. The philosophically pure
       libertarian answer is to treat all marriage contracts as legal
       contracts only, and to require that the terms of the marriage are
       spelled out clearly in the contract, allowing any number of legal
       adults to marry under any conditions that are legally enforceable,
       thus ending the implicit government-endorsement of all marriage
       contracts, including heterosexual ones. If the state no longer
       endorses only certain marriages as legitimate, there is no
       inequality; and gays, lesbians, polygamists, etc. can all draw up
       their own private legal contracts, just the same as heterosexuals
       could. The controversy arises from the fact that the State assumes
       that heterosexuals who did not draw up pre-nuptial agreements
       entered into a commonly-recognized Christian ritual union that
       entitles the united parties to the use of the State's legal system
       as a means of filing a record of their marriage and of resolving
       disputes. This system is widely used by heterosexuals who have not
       prepared for the likelihood of divorce and later contractual
       dispute. Although the system is currently thus flawed, many gays
       who wish to marry want the same ability to turn to the state in
       hopes that the same government assumptions of tax-funded contract
       protection that occasionally benefits heterosexuals. The dilemma
       for most libertarians arises from the fact that a currently unjust
       situation is popular. Heterosexuals currently have tax-funded
       protection and the assumption of enforceable contract resolution
       for their marriage contracts. Homosexuals often desire inclusion in
       this flawed system. Libertarians then are caught in the situation
       of trying to expand an unjust system to grant incorrectly-perceived
       benefits, or to deny certain parties membership within that unjust
       system. Many libertarians advocate the concept that there can be no
       such thing as a just separation of people into differing status
       groups under the law, so the current definition of marriage must
       include all those who wish to marry, with the later goal of
       eliminating this increased role of government in marriage entirely.
       It is thus the consistent view amongst all libertarians that the
       best resolution of inequalities under the law for gays would best
       be resolved by eliminating all state involvement in marriage (for
       heterosexuals, gays, polygamists, etc.), rendering every living
       human exactly equal under the law.

     * Inheritance: Libertarians may disagree over what to do in absence
       of a will or contract in the event of death, and over posthumous
       property rights. In the event of a contract, the contract is
       enforced according to the property owner's wishes. Typically,
       libertarians believe that any unwilled property goes to remaining
       living relatives, and ideally, none of the property goes to the
       government in such a case. Many libertarians advocate the
       establishments of trusts to avoid taxation of property at the time
       of death.

     * Natural resources: Some libertarians, (such as free market
       environmentalists and objectivists) believe that environmental
       damage is a result of state ownership and mismanagement of natural
       resources and believe that private ownership of all natural
       resources will result in a better environment, as a private owner
       of property will have more incentive to ensure the longer term
       value of the property. Others, such as geolibertarians, believe
       that such resources (especially land) cannot be considered
       property.

   The United States Libertarian Party approach to these issues is to say
   the focus is misplaced. Under the "Dallas Accord" LP members agreed
   that party documents and officials must focus on voluntary solutions
   and not favour any particular mode, be it minarchism or anything else.
   On social issues, the Platform focuses on voluntary alternatives and
   civil institutions, not coercive government, as the correct
   problems-solving entity. Those concerned about defense and immigration
   should look to the voluntary actions underway encouraged or performed
   by the Libertarian Party or allied movements. The correct solution to
   foreign woes is more Libertarian policies and presumably Libertarians
   in all countries.

Criticism of libertarianism

   Critics of libertarianism from both the left and the right claim that
   libertarian ideas about individual economic and social freedom are
   contradictory, untenable or undesirable. Critics from the left tend to
   focus on the economic consequences, claiming that perfectly free
   markets, or laissez-faire capitalism, undermines individual freedom for
   many people by creating social inequality, poverty, and lack of
   accountability for the most powerful. Criticism of libertarianism from
   the right tends to focus on issues of tradition and personal morality,
   claiming that the extensive personal freedoms promoted by libertarians
   encourage unhealthy and immoral behaviour and undermine religion.
   Libertarians mindful of such criticisms claim that personal
   responsibility, private charity, and the voluntary exchange of goods
   and ideas are all consistent manifestations of an individualistic
   approach to liberty, and provide both a more effective and more ethical
   way to prosperity and peaceful coexistence. They often argue that in a
   truly capitalistic society, even the poorest would end up better off as
   a result of faster overall economic growth - which they believe likely
   to occur with lower taxes and less regulation.

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