I wrote a brief preview of How Not to Achieve Freedom by Stefan Molyneux last week, if you’d like to read a summary of the work. In the interest of full disclosure, I helped to edit the text version.
Self Portrait - Leonardo Da Vinci, 1512
The release of this book is unusually timely. People of every ideological persuasion around the world are losing faith in gods, governments and ideologies at a historically unusual pace. The American experiment, it is said, is coming to an end – and the alternatives rising in Asia and Europe are foundering as well. If we were to ask how the world can not achieve freedom, the current state of affairs answers the question succinctly.
Molyneux dismantles the intellectual movement of libertarianism, which has as its stated goal to liberate mankind from oppressive government while also nurturing a prosperous and peaceful society. One of the central goals of his body of work – which consists of well over 1200 podcasts – most of which are over 40 minutes long – and with six non-fiction books on philosophy – has been to determine why political thinkers and economists have failed so consistently to reduce tyranny.
Through his exploration of rational philosophy and psychology, he finds that libertarians, as a whole, are more interested in putting on a lame anti-government circus than in enacting practical solutions to the contagion of violence in society. Libertarians, to generalize – albeit accurately – are hostile to practicing rationally consistent philosophy in their personal lives. The tolerance or outright reliance and support of religion within libertarian circles renders the movement hostile to the basic principles of psychology – which has the effect of consigning many to unfortunately primitive lives devoid of fruitful self-knowledge, in the same way that Christian Scientists spurn the rational discipline of medicine due to their superstitious beliefs.
Free-market academics do their part to keep freedom-lovers in pursuit of activist methods that consistently fail. Academics preach about the free-market from a pulpit built and sustained by continued state violence. Students unconsciously sense their brazen moral hypocrisy, and as such pay little attention to what they are being taught. If you have ever wondered how Republican politicians who carp about free market principles can support a grand socialist plan on a far greater scale, in terms of gross cash amounts, than anything even Stalin dreamed of, Molyneux’s analysis will provide welcome clarity.
Free-market principles are nigh-universally ignored because the professors that teach them discredit themselves with every word they speak and every bloody dollar they cram into their bulging pockets. Students can smell the rotting gore.
The Birth of Venus - Sandro Boticelli, 1485
Whether you are a libertarian yourself, a rational thinker or simply curious, you’ll find something to like from this new book. Molyneux’s methodology for explicating how libertarianism consistently fails to meet its stated goals can be easily applied to other political ideologies like social democracy or conservatism. His Universally Preferable Behavior is an indispensible philosophical tool for evaluating the logical validity of moral systems.
I would like to express my admiration and gratitude to Stefan for what he has done to help me and thousands of others. He has liberated more human beings from devastating moral mythology and the catastrophic after-effects of child abuse in the past two and a half years that Freedomain Radio has been in operation than any libertarian in history. He and his wife Christina are shining flames of reason, bringing happiness and wisdom to anyone who asks for it politely – all for free. Their passion for truth and reason along with their deep compassion inspires me daily.
I believe this book will free up potentially tens of millions of man-hours that would have otherwise been wasted.
The ideas we discuss today will forge a new age of enlightenment.
Sacred and Profane Love (or Venus and the Bride) - Titian, 1513-14
How Not to Achieve Freedom is available for free in PDF and audiobook.
2 Comments
October 9, 2008 at 10:51 pm
Bravo! Great review. I’ll probably link up to it !
October 10, 2008 at 2:56 am
Fantastic review! I hope people will check it out after I post it on facebook!