Interesting article, aimed at those (Cowperson, Ag) who think that libertarians (like myself) are in favour of utopian dog eat dog world.
The real root of many disagreements between libertarians and other conservative thinkers centers around the term "individualism," which has become a four-letter word in the political mainstream from left to right. Those who identify themselves as individualists or focus on individuals are accused of denying man's social nature (the right-wing criticism) or ignoring the vast, impersonal forces of society (the left-wing criticism). Since this piece is a plea to conservatives, it is only the first objection that I would like to concern myself with.
The canons of conservative orthodoxy overflow with aspersions cast on libertarians on the grounds that they are too individualistic. If they are in a particularly vilifying mood, the modifier "atomistic" is appended, by which the conservatives hope to establish that the individualist ethos posits an infinite gap between one man and another. Other invectives against libertarianism (accusations of libertinism, materialism, utopianism, egoism, etc.) are often rooted in the misunderstanding concerning the individual.
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The other sense in which Austro-libertarians are individualists is in the moral sense. It is man that has a nature, not mankind; thus, for any natural law ethic man must be the measuring stick. Institutions can be in accord or discord with this nature; the libertarian ethical claim is that any institution characterized by coercive action is unnatural with regards to man. In like manner, Austro-libertarians judge all institutions by way of individual man.
Moral individualism is not the same thing as egoism; even if one believes in absolute altruism towards one's fellows, those fellows must be recognized in their value as individuals rather than as an amorphous social blob. The precondition for treating another person as a person is to recognize his individual worth. The deadly flaw of collectivism is to replace concern for man with concern for mankind, which is nothing but a pattern resulting from the actions of individual man. This shift of focus can only come at the expense of the welfare of individual men.
Maybe those evil libertarians arent so anti-human afterall!
Full article:
http://www.mises.org/story/1870
