Libertarianism and Social Issues

Libertarianism and Social Issues

Thomas Allen

Below, some flaws of libertarianism related to social issues are exposed. Discussed are libertarian views on contagious diseases, discrimination, transgenderism, the nature of man, morality, and adultery. The flaws discussed below may be more perception and image than reality. However, perception and image are often more controlling and important than reality.

Contagious Diseases
The underlying principle of libertarianism is that everyone should be allowed to do whatever he pleases that he can afford if he does not trespass against another person or his property.
If a person with a contagious disease transmits that disease to another person, has he trespassed against the person whom he infects? Can the person who is infected sue the person who infected him? Should a community be allowed to protect itself from a carrier of a contagious disease by preventing the infected person from entering their community? Since a significant number of illegal immigrants entering the United States have contagious diseases, these are important questions that libertarians need to answer.
Since libertarians seem to express no concern about letting an unknown, but significant, number of people into the country with contagious diseases, they must have a great deal of confidence that vaccines will protect them, even from diseases for which no vaccines have been developed. (This faith is not surprising when the esteem that libertarians have for multinational corporations is considered.)

Discrimination
With one exception, most libertarians object to discrimination. Although most libertarians abhor discriminating against people based on race, sex, sexual orientation, religion, or political orientation, they oppose the government prohibiting people and companies from discriminating based on these reasons. Nevertheless, more libertarians seem to oppose discrimination based on race or sex than on religion or politics.
However, few libertarians object to discrimination based on wealth with many finding such discrimination agreeable. (This is a typical Yankee attitude.) For example, most libertarians object to “fair housing” laws that forbid private owners refusing to sell to a person because of race or putting restrictions in deeds to prohibit selling to people of specific races, although most libertarians find such practices reprehensible. However, few object of gated communities with high association fees designed to price nearly all of the undesirables out with extremely high housing cost. Thus, they find discrimination because of wealth acceptable. However, the person discriminated against is discriminated against and feels discriminated against; the reason for the discrimination is of secondary importance.
Another example is that most people discriminate in favor of family members. Most libertarians probably would not object to such discrimination if economics is not involved. For libertarians, economic trumps everything. It is the only acceptable reason for discrimination. Perhaps some libertarians find some exception to this dictum. They may object to discrimination against Blacks or homosexuals even if such discrimination is more profitable.

Transgenderism
All libertarians should oppose transgenderism because it is an act of fraud, but most do not. When a biological male (has a Y chromosome) tries to pass as a female (has no Y chromosome), that is a fraud. Likewise, the same is true when a biological female attempts to pass as a male. Nevertheless, how many libertarians really do consider transgenderism a fraud? (How long will it be before a person who dates a new person will require the date to provide a genetic test to prove his or her sex and sign a contract identifying what is accepted as conceptual sex?)

Nature of Man
In agreement with Rousseau, many libertarians, especially the anarcho-libertarians, believe that man by nature is good, unselfish (except the Randian Objectivists, who consider selfishness a great virtue), and wise. However, the government has corrupted and degraded him. How could wise, good, and unselfish people create something as corrupting and degrading as government? Is it not more reasonable and logical to consider people to be naturally sinners and that government is corrupted and degraded because sinners created and run it?
For that reason, power should be decentralized and dispersed instead of centralized and concentrated. Nevertheless, most libertarians who may believe that man is by nature sinful believe that a free market is sufficient not only to suppress that sin in the economic sphere but also in the political and social spheres.
A free market does a fairly good job of regulating sin in the economic realm because it usually disperses and decentralizes economic power. However, Marxism in all its forms, including progressivism, communism, socialism, and fascism, does a poor job because it consolidates and concentrates economic power. Nevertheless, a free market does little to regulate and suppress sin in the political sphere and especially the social sphere, where it is often in the forefront of sin.

Morality
As the old saying goes, in general, libertarians agree with conservatives on economic issues and with liberals on social issues. Thus, libertarians believe that the free market economy can exist and even thrive in a morally degraded society. Therefore, most libertarians oppose outlawing or even treating as mental disorders, homosexual acts, transgenderism, miscegenation, and other formerly sexual immoralities and such fraudulent perversions as “homosexual marriages.” (What is being referred to here are primarily public acts of sexual immorality and not private acts.) Most favor, or at least do not oppose, banning the God of the Christians and His Son and Messiah, Jesus, from public life. Yet, few seem to object to moving the god of Islam and Judaism and the gods of Hinduism and paganism to the forefront of public life, because these religions are far more compatible with secular humanism than is Christianity (although Muslim currently offers more resistance to homosexuals and transgenders than do most Christian.) Most progressives and liberals and many libertarians are secular humanists.
Strange is that libertarians, who claim to be great lovers of liberty, turn against the teaching of true Christianity, which is the only religion compatible with true liberty. Libertarianism grew out of Western Civilization, which grew out of Christianity and is or used to be a Christian society. No other religion, not even secular humanism, is compatible with libertarian ideals. Yet, most libertarians want to jettison Christianity’s teachings on morality. However, libertarians have not gone as far as Marxists, progressives, and their kindred in rejecting Christianity’s moral teaching of “thou shalt not steal.”  Nevertheless, in agreement with Marxists, progressives, and their kindred, most libertarians condone abortion, which is a violation of the moral law “thou shalt not murder.”
Libertarians fail to realize that abandoning one of God’s moral laws easily leads to abandoning the others. Marxists, progressives, and their kindred know this. That is why they eagerly push sexual immorality. (Next to lying, sexual morality is the easiest for humans to violate.) They know that abandoning sexual morality weakens and even destroys the family and makes stealing, murder, and even abandoning God, which is the ultimate goal, much easier. They know that sexual immorality makes establishing a socialist or a communist utopia much easier. So, why do so many libertarians join the Marxists in breaking down morality when the result is the death of the free market economy? The only real resistance that libertarians offer to the degradation of society is their opposition to using taxpayers’ money to do it.
Most libertarians seem not to recognize that liberties come from the God of the Christians. (Unfortunately, throughout the ages, Christians have been highly destructive of these liberties and have at times rivaled the Marxists in destroying liberties.) Secular man is the enemy of liberty, and Marxists and their kindred are secular men, who have elevated man above his Creator (just as the US government has been elevated above its creators, the States).

Adultery
Libertarians believe in the sacredness of contracts. Therefore, libertarians should be in the forefront in condemning adultery, which is a violation of the marriage contract. However, they are not. Contrariwise, they give the condemnation of adultery an extremely low priority. Some even find adultery acceptable, and almost no libertarian believes that the marriage contract should be enforced where adultery is involved. Their solution is to void the contract, i.e., divorce.

Copyright © 2019 by Thomas Coley Allen.

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