Bullshit Tactics (and How to Use Them)

Thursday, 6 March 2003

I found a list of "Bullshit Tactics Used Against Libertarians" at the Australian Libertarian Society site yesterday. Most of them are pretty good so I decided the list would be a good basis for a series on how to really piss off the libertarian in your life. There are 14 tactics in all - we'll just have to see how far I can get through the list before I get bored and move on to something else. Here's number one:

1. Pointing out that there are gray areas between voluntary and coercive action, and pretending that the existence of gray areas destroys the distinction and, hence, the very idea of liberty. Libertarianism is illusory.

This is obviously inadequate, and needs a little fine tuning. I suggest you begin by reading the Euthyphro from The Last Days of Socrates, to get an idea of how a master would handle things. Then, rather than pointing out those grey areas, just put this simple question: "Just what do you mean by liberty?" Don't take "Oh come on that's obvious" for an answer: insist on a definition.

If you get something like "Freedom from tyranny", you're on an easy winner - just follow up with "OK what's tyranny?" If you can't lead your libertarian adversary into a circular argument, you're just not trying hard enough. On the other hand, beware of asking the question "What are the responsibilities of consciousness?" You're very likely to get a long lecture on the importance of recognising that a straight line is a straight line and not, say, a parabola with the equation f(x) = 0x² + bx + c.

Your goal, by the way, is not to show that "Libertarianism is illusory": it's to show that your adversaries idea of libertarianism is naive because it relies on an unquestioned and ill-defined conception of liberty. If you're dealing with someone who has a more developed notion of liberty, from reading John Stuart Mill's essay On Liberty for example, you may have to put in a lot more work to reach the point where your exasperated libertarian says the magic words "You're full of shit!" I think we'll save that for the advanced course.