The The Freedom To Get Out Of My Face / The Naive Brutality Of Libertarianism

I have not been surprised by any of the quotes that have recently come to light from

 Ron Paul's racist newsletters. And, yes, no matter what Paul says, 
he knew about the articles and in fact is on the record defending the
 language and the articles back when they were written. I have
 learned from experience that if you talk to a hardcore 

Paul supporter for a reasonable length of time, these sorts of ideas
 are more likely than not to come up.

I often think that libertarianism - at least, its modern American version - 

is not really about increasing liberty or freedom as an average person would

 define those terms. An ideal libertarian society would leave the vast majority

 of people feeling profoundly constrained in many ways. This is because the freedom

 of the individual can be curtailed not only by the government, but by a large variety

 of intermediate powers like work bosses, neighborhood associations, self-organized 

ethnic movements, organized religions, tough violent men, or social conventions. 

In a society such as ours, where the government maintains a nominal monopoly on

 the use of physical violence, there is plenty of room for people to be oppressed by such

 intermediate powers, or local bullies.
The modern American libertarian ideology does not deal with the issue of local bullies. 

In the world envisioned by Nozick, Hayek, Rand, and other referenced "thinkers" of the 

movement, there are only two levels to society - the government (the "big bully") and the 

individual. If your freedom is not being taken away by the biggest bully that exists, your 

freedom is not being taken away at all.

In a perfect libertarian world, it is therefore possible for rich people to buy all the 

beaches and charge admission fees to whomever they want (or simply ban anyone they choose).

 In a libertarian world, a self-organized cartel of white people can, under certain conditions, get together and effectively prohibit black people from being able to go out to dinner in

 their own city. In a libertarian world, a corporate boss can use the threat of 

unemployment to force you into accepting unsafe working conditions. In other words,

 the local bullies are free to revoke the freedoms of individuals, using methods more subtle

 than overt violent coercion.

Such a world wouldn't feel incredibly free to the people in it. Sure, you could get

 together with friends and pool your money to buy a little patch of beach.

 Sure, you could move to a less racist city. Sure, you could quit and find another job.

 But doing any of these things requires paying large transaction costs. As a result 

you would feel much less free.

 The "theorists" of libertarianism obviously understood the principle that freedoms

 are often mutually exclusive - that my freedom to punch you in the face curtails quite a

 number of your freedoms. For this reason, they endorsed "minarchy," or a government 

whose only role is to protect people from violence and protect property rights. But they

 didn't extend the principle to covertly violent, semi-violent, or nonviolent forms of coercion.

Not surprisingly, this gigantic loophole has made modern American libertarianism 

the favorite philosophy of a vast array of local bullies, who want to keep the big bully 

(government) off their backs so they can bully to their hearts' content. The curtailment

 of government legitimacy, in the name of "liberty," allows abusive bosses to abuse

 workers, racists to curtail opportunities for minorities,polluters to pollute without cost, 

religious groups to make religious minorities feel excluded, etc. In theory, libertarianism 

is about the freedom of the individual, but in practice it is often about the freedom of

 local bullies to bully. It's a "don't tattle to the teacher" ideology.

Therefore I see no real conflict between Ron Paul's libertarianism and his

 support for the agenda of racists. It's just part and parcel of the whole 

movement. Not necessarily the movement as it was conceived, but the

 movement as it in fact exists.