{"id":308024,"date":"2017-05-13T19:40:41","date_gmt":"2017-05-13T18:40:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/the-pope-criticizes-libertarianism\/"},"modified":"2017-05-13T19:40:41","modified_gmt":"2017-05-13T18:40:41","slug":"the-pope-criticizes-libertarianism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/the-pope-criticizes-libertarianism\/","title":{"rendered":"The Pope Criticizes Libertarianism"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>As one of the leaders of the libertarian movement, I am exceedingly grateful to the Holy Father Pope Francis for his recent criticism of libertarianism. He does so in this \u201cMessage from the Holy Father to the participants in the Plenary Session of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences\u201d (28 April \u2013 2 May 2017). The full text of his important remarks is available <a href=\"http:\/\/press.vatican.va\/content\/salastampa\/en\/bollettino\/pubblico\/2017\/04\/28\/170428h.html\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Why so? According to one of the hoary insights of marketing, \u201cthere ain\u2019t no such thing as bad publicity.\u201d We libertarians are the Rodney Dangerfields of political economy. We simply \u201ccan\u2019t get no respect.\u201d Virtually all polls ask people if they are of the right or the left. We are neither. We are almost totally ignored not only by pundits, commentators, but also by scholars in such fields as history, politics, philosophy, economics, etc.<\/p>\n<p>At the core of libertarianism is the non-aggression principle (NAP): just law consists, only, of prohibiting the initiation of violence against innocent people. That is it, in its entirety. The remainder of this political economic philosophy deals with logical implications of the foregoing. Thus, in economics we favor laissez-faire capitalism, deregulation, free trade, the only system guaranteed to overcome man\u2019s natural state of poverty. In the area of personal liberties, we support the legalization of (but not at all the engagement in) victimless crimes pertaining to sex, drugs, gambling, etc. And in foreign policy we advocate a strong defense, but non-intervention in the affairs of other nations. It is a very narrow perspective, focusing, only, on just law; it is not at all a philosophy of life.<\/p>\n<p><em><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.cmi-gold-silver.com\/blog\/buy-old-us-gold-coins\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">Time to buy old US gold coins<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p>Does Pope Francis reject any of that? Not at all. Instead, he attacks libertarianism not for what we espouse,&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.lewrockwell.com\/2017\/05\/walter-e-block\/pope-criticizes-libertarianism\/\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As one of the leaders of the libertarian movement, I am exceedingly grateful to the Holy Father Pope Francis for his recent criticism of libertarianism. He does so in this \u201cMessage from the Holy Father to the participants in the Plenary Session of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences\u201d (28 April \u2013 2 May 2017). [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-308024","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308024","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=308024"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308024\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=308024"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=308024"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=308024"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}