What is libertarianism? Is is a social system? Is it a legal system? Is it an economic system? Is it a moral system? That is the real problem.
For some, it means property rights are more important than individual rights. For others, it means individual rights are more important than societal rights.
And I think that is why this advisor feels that libertarianism is not compatible with Catholicism. It doesn’t talk much about responsibilities. It is more about the I instead of the We. It is another man-centric system instead of a God-centric system.
I think the problem here is
a) Libertarians are poor at explaining libertarianism and very good at being caircatures of themselves. Because they often come across as foamers, some of their truly good arguments are not getting through to the rest of the people. If Libertrarians could learn to admit they’re wrong when they’re wrong, and admit that they don’t know when they don’t know, open minded non libertarians might also be more open to admit that liberariansim is right about certain things.
b) Libertarians live in a siege mentality. Any attack on any aspect of libertarianism is seen as an attack on libertariansim as a whole. Thus libertarians are slow to call their bluff on fellow libetrains when these are wrong, and make themselves ridiculous by defending things that shouldn’t be defended.
c) Libertarians don’t see that certain libertrain heroes are not real heroes for the rest of us. Any Rand for example. I’m sure that many libertrains must even think in private that she’s tedious and boring and predicatble but they will still defend her publically. This leads to a sort of intellectual dishonesty. In the same way, they often don’t genuinely engage in open minded arguments but strike back with a fixed armoury of fixed statements which sometimes makes them seem as if they would fail to pass a Turing Test. Intellectual dishonesty can sometimes be confused with stupidity. I know many libetarians and they’re far from stupid, but they must learn to stop acting as if they were.
d) Libertarians are too enamoured of capitalism as an end to all problems. They then go on to conflate different definitions of capitalism and this often leads to them defending the rights of big corporations even when these are directly opposed to the freedom they claim to be defending.
e) One philosopher said something like “defending a philosophical point when it benefits you is easy, continuing to defend it when it goes against your personal interests is a real test of your conviction”. many libertarians tend to be libertrian only as far as their own interests are concerned. Nobody likes taxes, for example. Libertrains fail to properly explain where their opposition to taxes ceases to be self serving and start to be a moral argument. As long as they fail there, mots people will see them as self-serving freeloaders.
