A humorist thinks that I am...

...a collectivist.

His characterization (unless it is tongue-in-cheek and then the joke is on me) is yet one more indication that libertarians' lack perspective. And such lack of perspective is yet another reason why -- to our universal detriment, (assuming one can frame things in terms of universals when dealing with extreme individualists) -- libertarians have virtually no influence in politics.

UPDATE:

1. Anyone who thinks (seriously now) in such hackneyed, simplistic, 1950s terms as "collectivist" should not be reading this blog. I like to think my readers have subtle, supple, adult minds and are reality-based.

2. Anyone who thinks that I am a "collectivist" has obviously not been reading this blog (or my book) and has zilch knowledge of what I write. (Read this blog for a while before you comment, please.)

3. Anyone who speaks and writes a language and yet who thinks in terms of "collectivist" should actually start thinking about what they are doing.  With every thought, every word, every sentence, (such as they are able to form), they themselves are taking part in the original collectivist enterprise: language. So get real. If you don't like being part of a collective,  stop talking. (Or make up a new language all your own and talk only to yourself.)

Comments

[Lynette Warren]

David Sucher commented:
we get the government we ask for and so we have no one to clame but ourselves when our government does something dumb. So it's not robbing anyone.

How is this statement from you anything but collectivist?

[Tim Hulsey]

She's right, David -- you're technically a "collectivist," inasmuch as you seem to focus on society and government rather than on individuals and agency. The thing she hasn't answered is why this is such a bad thing. After all, everyone's a collectivist nowadays.

[Lisa Williams]

Libertarianism is an idle fancy from a bunch of frustrated guys in technical professions who believe that if there were no laws, they'd be the winner in the resulting Nietzchean Superman Contest. They react badly when criticized simply because if you criticize libertarianism, you're implicitly criticizing their right to be recognized as the best class of person in society.

[David Sucher]

Tim,
I am glad you put the "seem" in there because I don't think your characterization is accurate.
I agree with you very much, however, that "everyone's a collectivist nowadays."

[Tim Hulsey]

They react badly when criticized simply because if you criticize libertarianism, you're implicitly criticizing their right to be recognized as the best class of person in society.

You're talking about Objectivism, not libertarianism. Some libertarians are also Objectivists, but I know many who are not.

[John Sabotta]

Special note for residents of our loathesome little city, Seattle! Check out this article and

[Tim Hulsey]

You're wrong about the common language, David. Language is a social convention, not collectivism. As convention, language comes closer to the "spontaneous order" occurring when people act individually in their best interests. Without governmental regulation to mandate certain types of expression, people tend to communicate in the ways most advantageous to them at the time, which is why some neighborhoods in the US use Spanish predominantly, others Korean or Chinese, and still others American Sign Language. There's no centralized, governmental authority to monitor what we say or how we say it (although it seems we're working on that). So if John uses the common tongue improperly, he won't be arrested in the middle of the night by a member of the Language Police -- as he well might be, if language were truly a collectivized affair.

[David Sucher]

Tim.
If "collectivism" simply means "centralized, governmental authority" then this is a pretty meaningless discussion. I thought "collectivism" actually was a term with some substance, with some sort of psychological resonance. If you really equate "collectivism" with having "centralized, governmental authority" then, honestly, you are at the wrong blog.

[Scott Wood]

David,

Do you recognize a distinction between collective action that is not centrally organized (e.g., the traditional story of the evolution of language, the progressive destruction of fish stocks by competitive commercial fishing), and collective action that is centrally organized (e.g., the governmental construction of city strets, the Stalinist "collectivization" of Ukrainian farms)?

I think that's an important distinction, and "collectivism" is the term typcally used for it.

It's OK to chafe at the use of that term for it, but if you don't recognize that that's what libertarians (and a lot of other people) mean by "collectivism" then you pretty much won't understand what they are saying.