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Culture War Roundup for the week of March 18, 2024

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I'm not a libertarian, personally, but I don't think libertarians have the goal of society of driving humanity forward or progressivism of any sort. Some of them do, but that is adjacent to libertarianism. They just want a government that can defend property rights from outsiders and arbitrate disputes between insiders. You can't make a critique of liberal morality to libertarianism because they consider it in the domain of the individual and not the government.

A libertarian will tell you if you want to change the world, become an angel investor, or if you lack the means, purchase stock in the most forward-thinking companies. Or even better, start your own. Not demand the government to do so. And this is entirely consistent within their world view. Just because you don't like it or clutch your pearls about the second order consequences doesn't mean it doesn't make sense to a libertarian.

That is fine. I just think is is a terrible way to go about governing (or not governing) a large population. No man is an island, we live in a society, there but for the grace of god go I, and the thousand practical benefits of helping and being helped by your fellow humans. yadda yadda yadda....

There also seems to be an expectation that anyone and everyone is perfectly healthy and intelligent and is capable of starting a business or being the locus of their own control, etc...etc... a huge section of humanity isn't cut out for that, and the rest certainly weren't when they were born and won't be when they are old.

Nobody is clutching any pearls, just pointing out some basic stuff.