Comments Elsewhere

Steven: libertarianism violates a principle rule of politics that has been observed as far back as Western civilization has cared to observe it: all parties (individuals, groups, nations) will pursue ends that are ruinous by their own standards if they are not checked in some meaningful way.

This and several other complaints that you lodge against libertarianism above may be answered by pointing out that libertarianism is a theory of justice, not a constitutional theory.

There are lots of different ways that a libertarian society might organize itself politically, and different kinds of libertarians (centralists as against decentralists, constitutionalists vs. moralists, minarchists as against anarchists, anarcho-capitalists as against mutualists and syndicalists and other left libertarians, etc.) have different ideas about what, ideally, that should look like. Decentralists, for example, would suggest that the best way to build and sustain a free society is by decentralizing political power to states, counties, municipalities, etc., thus increasing the number of political units that can check and balance each other and decreasing their unilateral power. Centralists tend to think that keeping political power roughly as it is, or increasing central power, can be alright if it serves the cause of liberty (which they think it sometimes can). Minarchists think that some kind of sovereign state is necessary or desirable for a free society; anarchists think that it’s inconsistent with principled libertarianism. “Panarchists” tend to think that any constitutional arrangement is O.K. as long as people are able to freely leave it and participate in others, and so tend to take the attitude of letting a thousand flowers bloom. There are libertarians who favor anarchy, libertarians who favor direct democracy, libertarians who favor representative legislatures, and even a few libertarians who favor monarchy.

There is at least as much diversity in libertarian constitutional theories as there is in non-libertarian constitutional theories, and probably more, since there are at least two major types of constitutional theory (anarchist and panarchist) that don’t exist outside of libertarianism. Some of them emphasize an extensive system of checks and balances; others don’t, or don’t express much concern about the question in the first place.

Libertarianism, however, is identical with none of these constitutional theories; it is merely the claim that the only just form of violence is self-defense. The question of how to create, sustain, and defend a just society, given libertarian principles of justice, is an interesting question of constitutional theory, but there is no single libertarian answer to it.

Hope this helps.