Libertarians Right or Right

Of all the points on the political compass, the Right Libertarian position is my favourite. My favourite, that is, in the sense that it provides the most entertainment; but also, truth be known, because I share some of the same ground.

Not a few Right Libertarians started life on the left and ended up where they are due, I suspect, to the force of logic. Because the plain fact is that Left Libertarians need to be, at best, able to believe six contradictory things before breakast, and at worst need to be positively schizophrenic to remain where they are. How can you regard individual freedom as sacrosant and think something should be done about poverty and lack of opportunity, at one and the same time? I don't know about anyone else, but it's a struggle for me, I can tell you.

No such problems abound at the South East corner of the political atlas, of course, where the only belief stronger than that of individual freedom is self belief. Am I alone in finding Right Libertarians the smuggest and furthest up their own arses in the political universe? Okay, they tend to be quite intelligent. Intelligent in the sense they possess a fair amount of logical reasoning ability, which is why they tend to punch above their weight in the bar room or the comments boxes. But come on guys, the lecturing, hectoring holier than the rest of the fucking universe doesn't half grate.

And the Right Libertarian's loudest voices tend to be considerably more Right than they are Libertarian. For instance, my child's problems with health arising from pollution are of considerably less importance than companies' rights to make money. And it is axiomatic that only governments, especially left wing, sorry, LEFT WING governments act corruptly. Business never exploits anything or anyone and when they do it's in the interests of the exploitees anyway. And if it's not, well social disapproval will soon sort it out. Or the Market, that mystical entity that would rule the universe if only reason were allowed to hold sway.

The market and social disapproval. How the eight year olds up the chimneys in Victorian England must have been grateful, knowing the market and social disapproval would eventually have led to the end of their plight. How their counterparts in the sweatshops of the Thid World must rejoice when they hear the free marketeers tell them things will get better in less than a generation. How the farmers in Kerala, using Coca Cola's toxic sludge as fertilizer while their women walk five kilometres twice a day for water because their boreholes have been emptied, must appreciate that governments should have no rights to intervene in the important task of making fizzy drinks lest the gods of the markets be thwarted. It's for their own good, you see. They were worse off before, when their fields didn't have carcinogens dug in and when they had water. They are just too ideologically prejudiced to realise how much better off they are now.