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From: flink@umcp-cs.UUCP (Paul Torek)
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: Libertarianism & freedom
Message-ID: <2375@umcp-cs.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 9-Jan-85 15:06:07 EST
Article-I.D.: umcp-cs.2375
Posted: Wed Jan  9 15:06:07 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 12-Jan-85 06:44:46 EST
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Organization: U of Maryland, Computer Science Dept., College Park, MD
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[Summary: non sequitur detected]

In article <2673@ihldt.UUCP> stewart@ihldt.UUCP (R. J. Stewart) writes:
>Actually, this has been explained on the net, but with the high volume
>in this newsgroup it may have been missed.  The axiom that Libertarians
>believe in (even more basic than the non-initiation of force), is:
>
>     There are about as many views of "right" and "wrong" as there are
>     people in the world.  None of these can be shown to be better, in
>     any objective way, than any other.
>
>Given that this is true, libertarians then reason that it is wrong for
>one person, or a group of persons with similar views, to force their
>(rather arbitrary) set of values on other people.  Non-coercion follows
>from this reasoning, it does not drive it.

In order to show that the conclusions R. J. Stewart draws from this
"axiom" don't follow, I thought the following quotation might be
instructive.  Benito Mussolini drew some very different conclusions
from that relativistic axiom:

	If relativism signifies contempt for fixed categories
	and men who claim to be the bearers of an objective,
	immortal truth ... then there is nothing more relativistic
	than Fascist attitudes and activity. ... From the fact 
	that all ideologies are of equal value, that all ideologies
	are mere fictions, the modern relativist infers that 
	everybody has the right to create for himself his own
	ideology and to attempt to enforce it with all the energy
	of which he is capable.*

* Benito Mussolini, _Diuturna_, pp. 347-77.  Quoted from Helmut Kuhn,
_Freedom Forgotten and Remembered_, Chapel Hill, NC: University of North 
Carolina Press, 1943, pp. 17-18.

			--the aspiring iconoclast,
			Paul V. Torek, (moving to) wucs!wucec1!pvt1047