I recently read a column on Snope.com where the "real" libertarian agenda was published. I did some googling, and as near as I can tell, it started as a blog post at Caleb's Column. You can read the original post here.
A few highlights of the evil libertarian agenda:
1. Replace public schools, which are required to be somewhat religiously and politically neutral, with right-wing Christian fundamentalist academies which indoctrinate students with ultra-right ideology, and are run to make profits.
5. Remove all social programs which aid the poor, including Social Security, Medicare, Workplace Health and Safety, Unemployment Insurance, Drug Treatment Programs, Student Loans, and the Department of Labor.
12. Rewrite history to make Communism worse than Fascism.
16. Rewrite history to make Senator Joe Mccarthy into a great American hero.
17. Remove all public knowledge that Socialism and Communism ever had a mass following in the United States. “Who controls the present, controls of the past.”
I must confess, as a person who has vote with the Libertarian party for the last 20 years, and as a hard-core atheist, I was somewhat shocked to discover I'd been working all these years to push kids into right-wing, Christian Fundamentalist schools. That wasn't in my indocrination kit at all! Well, I'm tearing up my member card right now, boy, I tell you what.
Or, maybe not.
My first reaction was to argue with this article post by post. Some of these agenda items actually sound like good ideas to me though. I would love to see cuts in social security and medicaire... those are a big part of the reason we are currently a debtor nation to the tune of 10 trillion dollars. If fairness, I want to cut defense spending as well, and whatever trivial percentage of our budget is currently being spent on the War on Drugs, or in trying to catch governors spending their own dough on prostitutes. Other items in the post seem strange... I'm not sure one needs to rewrite history to make communism worse than fascism. On sheer bodycount, the commies win. But, "worse" is such a strange qualifier here. It's like saying that lung cancer is worse than stomach cancer. Can't we just agree to lump it into the list of things that suck, and move on? It's not like any libertarian I know thinks that fascism was the way to go.
The last two items I listed because they seem so contradictory. If libertarians are engaged in an effort to puff up Joe McCartney (???), then wouldn't we want to promote that he was right, and that we were absolutely overrun with internal commies, since this was his big claim to fame? And, of course there were once big communist and socialist movements... most libertarians will tell you they still are, they just relabeled themselves as democrats and republicans.
But, the most mysterious thing about the column to me is, really, why bother to slander libertarians? There is no chance in the world we're going to take over congress or the presidency any time soon. You don't need to misrepresent our ideas to have people reject us... people reject our actual ideas without much prodding, thank you very much. And, since he's framing this as a libertarian/communist dichotomy, I would point out that libertarians have never really held power anywhere in the world, while commies have controlled about 1/3 of the world's population. It just seems like a very strange thing to view libertarians as a threat to the great historical march of Marxism.
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A few highlights of the libertarian agenda:
1. Replace public schools...
Libertarians would not enforce separation of church and state in schools by succeeding the power to the states. States can implement religious laws legally. They would prefer for profit schools which would naturally dominate the landscape under their policies. Ultra-right wing, religious indoctrination would be the natural result of their policies in about half of the states in the union but in only about a quarter of the total population since big cities are unlikely to go with this debauchery. In any case, a lack of regulation will give huge disparities in educational status which will guarentee some people life time poverty for having been born to a certain region with in a certain family. I would never hire someone from these places. I do not see why I should since their educational standards are totally defunct.
5. Remove all social programs...
They would rather these programs be administered by private organizations for profit or not be offered at all. They assume that people are payed what they deserve and that poor people deserve their positions. Furthermore, they believe that rich people deserve what ever they can get. They think "free markets" will keep these people in check. I would rather simply mandate a pay scale, asset holding capacity, and drop the social programs but people will hate that more than what we have. It all boils down to them deserving things that they presume everyone else does not deserve.
12. Rewrite history to make Communism worse than Fascism.
Communism is worse than Fascism in the Libertarian mind. I do not see why we would expect for this not to happen.
16. Rewrite history to make Senator Joe Mccarthy into a great American hero.
This one mostly depends on which libertarians you are talking about. This is an unlikely position for a standard libertarian.
17. Remove all public knowledge that Socialism and Communism ever had a mass following in the United States. “Who controls the present, controls of the past.”
Why would we expect otherwise. These ideas are by definition evil to these people and they will frame things as they see fit naturally.
At the end you say, "...I would point out that libertarians have never really held power anywhere in the world, while commies have controlled about 1/3 of the world's population. It just seems like a very strange thing to view libertarians as a threat to the great historical march of Marxism."
This is true because libertarian folk always become fascists as soon as they are in power to do something. There is no way they are going to open the door to competition that will surmount them. This is similar to the fact that Communism has always been in name alone not in actual practice since the the communist leaders of the past always instituted dictatorial hierarchies which they exercised most of the control. The result being condition that was hardly different from the paradigms they surmounted. Additionally, all communist actions acted on the false premise of scarcity. Scarcity is manufactured or it is the result of our own ignorance. Libertarianism would necessitate a absolute dictatorship due to human nature. This makes the proposition an oxymoron just the same as communism.
I would be a libertarian if it wasn't for my perception that cannot actually function. Reality requires an evolving, mixed state that responds to feedback from both traditional hierarchies and mass democratic movement. All laws must uniformly apply to all. Giant levels of economic polarity must not exist for long periods of time. All people must have equal access to all the facilities of the time.
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