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From: bprice@bmcg.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: Ethics and others in libertarianism - (nf)
Message-ID: <1164@bmcg.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 2-Aug-84 20:17:02 EDT
Article-I.D.: bmcg.1164
Posted: Thu Aug  2 20:17:02 1984
Date-Received: Sun, 5-Aug-84 01:07:46 EDT
References: <2501@mit-vax.UUCP>, <10100067@ea.UUCP>, <912@pyuxa.UUCP>
Organization: Burroughs Corporation, San Diego
Lines: 42

>                                The myth of safer driving in West
>Germany is just that, a myth.
>         The drivers over there may well take a libertarian view
>of their driving, but it doesn't last long as they are being
>scrapped off a bridge abuttment.  If that's the attitude the
>libertarians take, then I say they are wrong.  To say you have the 
>'right' to kill yourself is infringing on my liberty in that
>I have to pay my hard earned cash to send out the rescue squad,
>repair crews, and police to pull your body out of the mangled
>wreckage which just happened to take out 60 feet of guardrail
>and a lampost before bending the hell out of two signs.
>             Libertarian arguments about driving fast are
>when they want to are stupid.
>T. C. Wheeler

Those of us who are libertarian would have just cause to take anger at
Wheeler's blatant misrepresentation of libertarianism.  TCW does blunt
that anger a little by "If that's the attitude the libertarians take...".
If that were the attitude that libertarians take, most of us who are now
libertarians wouldn't be--the libertarian attitude also says that TCW's 
postulated infringement is very wrong.

The essence (meaning 'ultimate nature' rather 'smell') of libertarianism is
simply personal responsibility.  This includes the responsibility not to try
to make you pay for the rescue squad, etcetera.  Instead, the libertarian view
requires that I may some arrangement to scrape my own body off the abutment, if
I'm going to put it there.  Failing to do so would give the cleaneruppers a
cause of action against my estate--it would still be my posthumous
responsibility.

To the libertarian, the evil in TCW's hypothetical lies in his assumption that
it is somehow right that I be deprived of my responsibility--any
responsibility.  To steal my responsibility is to steal much of the essence of
my life--and that, my friend, is unarguably evil.

There is another discussion going on about biased reporting.  Is TCW's lack of
understanding a result of the misrepresentations that we have all seen,
misleading many about the nature of libertarianism in particular and politics
in general?
-- 
--Bill Price    uucp:   {decvax!ucbvax  philabs}!sdcsvax!bmcg!bprice
                arpa:?  sdcsvax!bmcg!bprice@nosc