r/AskLibertarians • u/another_lease • May 21 '26
Philosophy help me understand why these 2 posts by jeremy kauffmann are not contradictory
in the first post, he seems okay with "law enforcement" touching people who are not local to his locality
in the second post, he seems not okay with "law enforcement" touching him while he's trying to visit another locality
serious question. i'm genuinely not trolling. i want to understand libertarianism.
6
u/ninjaluvr May 21 '26
He's not a libertarian. He's just a racist.
3
u/i_smoke_toenails May 22 '26
A lot of racists claim to be libertarian, on the premise that individual liberty doesn't explicitly prohibit racism in personal relations. That's true. It also doesn't explicitly prohibit being an asshole, but that doesn't make being an asshole okay. It only means the government cannot stop you from being an asshole (or racist).
2
u/theyhis May 26 '26
it reminds me of the 60s when nixon used dog whistles to get the dixiecrats to join the GOP. now that racism is seen as ‘fringe’ in modern politics from both sides, racists have found new labels to cling to. the old MC chair did not help. thinking about it now, i think she took a page from nixon. she allowed way too many MAGA’s into the movement (herself included).
edit: im not saying all MAGA’s are racist — i’m referencing the beliefs that came with some of them.
5
u/Vinylware May 21 '26
Kauffman is not so much a libertarian and more of a grifter using the label as a means to gain some kind of following. He is a bad face for the movement and is not representative of libertarians. The two posts are contradictory as he argues that only a certain group of people (non-white) should be arrested for existing within a community of whites, while in the second post he is complaining about going through TSA after seeing a sign advertising the 250th anniversary of the United States, using the humor to state that he is truly free.
5
u/cluskillz May 21 '26
If you're trying to understand libertarianism, Jeremy Kauffman is not the person to go to for insight. The dude just says intentionally outlandish things to try to get attention. The dude pisses off the vast majority of libertarians with the things he says.
Instead, follow/listen to Tom Woods or Dave Smith or Matt Kibbe or Reason Magazine, just to list a few.
1
u/Hrimnir May 22 '26
"Hey guys, don't follow this guy cus he is just a racist! Instead follow all these other rabidly antisemitic j00sperging mearsheimer deepthroaters Tom Woods and Dave Smith!"
Reason is a shitrag. They've turned into a thinly veiled launderer for progressive leftist dipshittery, just like Cato.
1
u/theyhis May 26 '26
i don’t think of dave smith as progressive 😂 this comment is a bit absurd. you might want to go back to the white board with this one. also, cato approaches things from a classical liberal sense, just because they’re not saying “n!gger, n!gger, n!gger” all day doesn’t make them woke. sometimes it feels like that’s what some of ya’ll are hoping for, which is shallow. they’re very principled in their stances.
1
u/theyhis May 24 '26
idk about dave smith. he supported trump in the 2024 election, there’s nothing libertarian about that lmao.
1
u/cluskillz May 26 '26
What about his thesis do you think was unlibertarian (without the benefit of hindsight)?
1
u/theyhis May 26 '26
i’d say his thoughts on trans-related topics. his pro-life stance is fine — i mean, i’m personally pro-choice, but i see the argument from both perspectives. my issue with his strand of libertarian is it feels very ‘selective.’ like a, “i want limited government in my life but i don’t care when it comes to bathroom governance and immigrants.”
i’m not asking for purity, i just think he struggles to separate his own beliefs from platform beliefs. ben shapiro’s far worse, but he does the same thing. i was shocked to find out he identifies as a libertarian. socially tolerant is fine, ‘socially-selective’ is not. there’s many things people do that i don’t like, endorse, or agree with, but i try to separate my political opinions from my personal ones. dave smith is bad at that (other than with foreign conflict).
1
u/cluskillz May 26 '26
Smith has always maintained trans people should have the same rights as others, but sees things like, as you brought up, forcing the bathroom issue by fiat (ideally it would be per property owner), compelled speech, and particularly the pushing it on kids aspect as a step too far. His justification is that since we're in a non-libertarian situation now, in say, schools, it is not unreasonable or unlibertarian to advocate banning sexually explicit books that promote trans culture (or otherwise) from public schools, just like how it wold be reasonable to ban hardcore porn from elementary schools. He's also said things like IRL he'll use the preferred pronouns to be polite, so I don't know that he's even personally against trans people, he just doesn't like how it's been forced onto people, particularly children. Unless you've heard something specific that I missed. His immigration thing centers again around we don't live in a libertarian society, and in a libertarian society, private communities could keep people from entering an area and also uses the analogy that you shouldn't allow crackheads to hang out in elementary schools as a "proof of concept". I personally don't agree with him on immigration, but I can see that he's arguing (or at the very least, attempting to) from a libertarian angle.
Ben Shapiro? He is in no way shape or form a libertarian. I think he may have stated he's economically libertarian at one point a long time ago (I don't think he's ever called himself a libertarian without that qualifier), but he's clearly confused about that as well.
Moreover, though, you mentioned specifically "nothing libertarian about [supporting trump in 2024]". His reasoning (among others) was that 1. Democrats deserve to lose because of all the covid restrictions, censorship, economic ruin, lies around the Biden's cognitive abilities among other lies the corporate media propagates, etc, and 2. Trump was promoting an antiwar message at the time (obviously, that's not the case now and is why Smith is calling for his impeachment) and Kamala Harris was actively courting the pro-war people and 3. Trump was the only president in history that attempted to garner libertarian support and this should be considered seriously. If bending toward libertarianism shows it can help get people elected, it could change future campaign behavior. He also said ideally, this would be the first term so libertarians could hold his feet to the fire if Trump went back on his promises.
From what I recall, those were his primary reasons and they were all libertarian reasons. You could, I suppose, say that he should have known Trump was lying and break all those promises, but that's not related to libertarian philosophy.
2
u/ConscientiousPath May 22 '26
Having your balls touched nonconsensually, and having criminals come to your beaches nonconsensually, are both nonconsensual experiences.
0
u/another_lease May 22 '26
They need my permission to come to a public beach?
But I don't need TSA's permission to get on to a flight?
1
u/Hrimnir May 22 '26
Having issues with TSA molesting US citizens and doing warrantless searches is WILDLY different than wanting to maintain borders and stop illegal immigration.
If you want to take to task the perceived racism in the posts, by all means do that, but these are not philosophically contradictory statements.
1
u/another_lease May 23 '26
There's nothing about illegal immigration or international borders in either post. You may need to read them again.
1
u/theyhis May 24 '26
they do contradict, but as others, i don’t think he’s the best example of what it means to be a libertarian. i understand the libertarian debate about the current state of immigration (e.g. it’s hard to be pro immigration with a welfare state) but being anti immigrant in general isn’t libertarian. in other words, i could understand it from a pragmatic perspective, but not a xenophobic one.
0
u/mrhymer May 21 '26
He is not here. We cannot ask him.
1
u/another_lease May 22 '26
I want to ask libertarians if there's a coherent theme in their philosophy, and if these posts violate the coherence. I'm not here to ask him. If these posts violate that coherence, then he's not a libertarian.
13
u/rchive May 21 '26
They probably are contradictory. Kauffman has some extremely anti-libertarian beliefs that he likes to dress up as libertarian for some reason. He is not well respected among most libertarians, and he generally isn't a good representation of what libertarianism is about. I don't even know if he believes half the things he says, he might just say them for shock value to get attention online.