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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Steve Lokness who wrote (37902)	5/26/2007 1:15:53 PM
From: Dale Baker	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 542245

Why would someone NOT want to be "free to do whatever they wish with their persons or property provided they allow others the same liberty..."? At a minimum, the impact and consequences for others of what one person does with themselves and their property have to be considered and regulated for society to exist in its modern form. No man is an island.

To: Steve Lokness who wrote (37902)	5/26/2007 1:17:40 PM
From: JohnM	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 542245

That, of course an oversimplification, from Wikipedia. As a starting point though, why would someone NOT want to be the "absolute owners" of their own lives? Why would someone NOT want to be "free to do whatever they wish with their persons or property provided they allow others the same liberty..."? Is this not the embodiment of America? No, but that would be a wonderful conversation to have. I'm going out of town in the early evening and won't be back for a week. And am spending most of my time today packing and organizing. So I don't have time to think carefully about such a post. But I will enjoy doing such when I get back. In the meantime, my argument would start with two absences in libertarian theory. The first is the fact of our interconnectedness. We don't come into the world, nor navigate our way around the world, as independent, socially disconnected, beings. We are dependent and connected in sundry ways. Libertarian political theory simply ignores that. Second, it ignores the role of the state in modern society and is why, if you take a course in political theory, libertarian theory is unlikely to be treated as more than a counter example. As I type that, though, I suspect it is having something of a mild revival given the revival of rational actor assumptions, drawn from economics, in political analysis (not theory). But, to fill that out would take some time and to engage you in some back and forths. Certainly to ask why libertarian theory appeals and how you would think about these two absences in libertarian theory.