Saturday, March 07, 2009

The Libertarian From Nazareth?

The Libertarian From Nazareth?

Thanks to Paul Trombley for pointing this one out. A perfect illustration of "Spiritually baptize the deceased as libertarians because they cannot protest the anachronism" from my Libertarianism in One Lesson.

The simplest reason that Jesus was obviously not a libertarian is because he does not condemn slavery: instead he tells slaves to be like their masters. A five-second google search for "jesus" and "slavery" turned up SLAVERY and the BIBLE, which details all the missed opportunities Jesus had to condemn slavery.

If I wanted to be as stupid and anachronistic as the author, Butler, I'd also point out that Jesus doesn't preach for a right to keep and bear firearms. Or any more temporally-correct form of weapons.

It's been added to my Make Or Break Views Of Libertarianism as an example of amazingly awful reasoning crossing the line into self-parody. Not to mention Libertarian Revisionist History. The idea that Jesus was a libertarian is one of the most amazingly stupid anachronisms I've ever heard.

4 comments:

James M. Jensen II said...

I especially love how he twisted "render unto Caesar" into a defense of private property. That reminded me of another attempt I saw to paint Jesus as an anarcho-capitalist because of the parable of the vineyard owner paying the laborers whatever he liked instead of based on how much they've worked — missing the point that it's an allegory about God's sovereignty, not necessarily a comment on contemporary social conventions.

Sigh. Fundie libertarians are almost as scary as fundie Christians.

Anonymous said...

Fun article. Keep up the good work! :)

Unknown said...

I noticed that one of the links is titled "Libertarian Revisionist history". one of the biggest revionists is Thomas Dilrenzo. This guy has written several books,and numerous articles for right wing think tanks such as "Lew Rockwell",and so forth. Dilrenzo makes so many wild claims,and false accusations that one is often left thinking if this guy could ever be capable of telling the truth. I remember one time he stated that he published in scholarly peer-reviewed journals,but he never actually named what journals he had published for.

This guy is perhaps the biggest Libertarian fraud,and his penchant for BS even eclipses that of John Stossel.

there have bee numerous articles about how this guy is full of junk,but he still insists that his revisionist history is fundamentally correct,and instead of actually addressing the arguments he instead calls his detractors "Lincoln cultists".

http://hidhist.wordpress.com/lincoln/thomas-j-dilorenzos-the-real-lincoln-a-rebuttal/

AMIT said...

Interesting article from you.

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