Conspiracy Libertarians, Waystation Libertarians, Activists vs. Principled Libertarians

by Stephan Kinsella on April 30, 2025

From Twitter:

My libertarian friends sure don’t. A lot of them are big conspiracy types. I think a lot of them can’t even understand why I’m a libertarian if I don’t believe the conspiracies, which means that the only reason that they’re libertarian is because they believe in conspiracies.

— Stephan Kinsella (@NSKinsella) April 28, 2025

Exactly this is one thing that bothers me about conspiracy nuts. It’s as if they would not be that opposed to the state if they thought all the people in it were honest and good. It’s like they don’t see that the real problem is the state’s essential nature.

— Stephan Kinsella (@NSKinsella) April 28, 2025

A twitter friend, Michael Liebowitz, asked “Do you think it impossible, or even highly unlikely, that Jeffrey Epstein could have committed suicide?”

I replied: “No. It is obviously likely. Just like it is likely that Oswald killed JFK, acting alone.”

Liebowitz: “I like that you don’t buy into conspiracies.”

My reply:

My libertarian friends sure don’t. A lot of them are big conspiracy types. I think a lot of them can’t even understand why I’m a libertarian if I don’t believe the conspiracies, which means that the only reason that they’re libertarian is because they believe in conspiracies.

Another guy: “I’m an anarcho-capitalist because the state is unjust even assuming it is actings with the absolute best of intentions at all times. Yet it seems many ancaps’ belief that the state is unjust hinges on them being able to blame it for some conspiracy.”

I replied:

Exactly this is one thing that bothers me about conspiracy nuts. It’s as if they would not be that opposed to the state if they thought all the people in it were honest and good. It’s like they don’t see that the real problem is the state’s essential nature.

Perhaps this also explains the phenomenon of waystation libertarians. They were never really into it on principled grounds. Or activists. Or consiracy nuts (I and some of my friends sometimes refer to them as ‘toids, or conspiratoids). I’m into it on principled grounds. I won’t “move on” when we don’t have success, or if I can’t find some evil conspiracy to “explain” statist crap. I’m going down with this ship. Fighting even if we lose. As I wrote in Lewis in the Silver Chair, when the Emerald Witch was trying to make Puddleglum and others, who were her captors in her underground world, and under a magical spell, believe there is no Narnia, and no Aslan (the Jesus-figure)—no world above, no sun, no lions, until

Puddleglum shoves his bare foot in a fire, so that the pain helps rouse him from the spell:

“One word, Ma’am” he said coming back from the fire; limping because of the pain. “One word. All you’ve been saying is quite right, I shouldn’t wonder. I’m a chap who always liked to know the worst and then put the best face I can on it. So I won’t deny any of what you said. But there’s one thing more to be said, even so. Suppose we have only dreamed, or made up, all those things – trees and grass and sun and moon and stars and Aslan himself. Suppose we have. Then all I can say is that, in that case, the made-up things seem a good deal more important than the real ones. Suppose this black pit of a kingdom of yours is the only world. Well, it strikes me as a pretty poor one. And that’s a funny thing, when you come to think of it. We’re just babies making up a game, if you’re right. But four babies playing a game can make a play-world which licks your real world hollow. That’s why I’m going to stand by the play-world. I’m on Aslan’s side even if there isn’t any Aslan to lead it. I’m going to live as like a Narnian as I can even if there isn’t any Narnia.

Now this is obviously meant to show how important faith is, among other things. I am not really convinced by it in a theological sense, though it is a good effort. What I like about it is how well it meshes with my view of libertarian ethics, and regular ethics for that matter. I believe there is something to the Humean idea that you can’t derive an ought from an is. All oughts are in a sense hypothetical: based on a choice to be ethical in the first place. The battles over morals are battles between those who have chosen the civilized path, and those who are criminal, animal-like–outlaws. You can’t ask why someone wants to be moral, any more than you can prove that it is moral to choose to live (as Rand argued, the choice to live is amoral; this choice is the foundation of all other morals–so in a sense, Rand’s ethics was hypothetical, as alluded to in Harry Binswanger’s article Life-Based Teleology as the Foundation of Ethics). But the sort of drive or sense of why someone does choose the moral and civilized life, I find expressed and echoed in the Lewis passage above. And either you get it or you don’t.

To me the passage also expresses why God’s existence really cannot matter too much for moral truths; why standards of good and evil are outside God; why the idea that God is a “source” of morals and rights is confused, and just an extension of legal positivism back one level. The legislature cannot by decree make murder evil; nor could God; which is not to impugn God but to declare that some things are objectively evil–are at least, are seen so by those who choose to distinguish between good and evil, by those who prefer peace, cooperation, and civilization, to violence and depradation.

This is my attitude towards libertarianism: “I’m going to live as like a Narnian as I can even if there isn’t any Narnia”—that is, believe in and fight for liberty even if we make no progress now, even if we don’t win, even if we can never win; I’ll be a proponent of rights and decency and cooperation and prosperity even if you want to poke holes in our arguments, even if there is no proof of natural rights—I’m still on the side of goodness and human decency, rightness and justice, regardless.