There are many libertarians out there. Oh, who are we kidding? No there aren’t. And also, many of the few that are, are No True Libertarians. But, as a Romanian saying goes, we work with the customer’s situation.

Among the libertarians, there are many categories. Minarchinst, an-cap, bleeding heart, degenerate and much more. They differ on as many issues as they agree upon, although they have sufficient thing in common to believe a world in which the political arguments would be ones between different flavors of libertarian would be a better one indeed.

But I am not going to talk about this division, but a different one. What is the source and the foundation of the libertarianism? My general thought on the matter for the majority of my glib life was as follows. For the foundation I see the main categories as deontological (true) vs utilitarian (meh). For the source I see it a bit between rational and instinctive, as a way to express it.

Now to be perfectly clear: I am not saying some are more rational than others in life, in general or in any way. Just as the source of their libertarianism. To phrase it a certain way, you either knew deep down before putting into words, or put into words before knowing deep down.

I see instinctive (or is it instinctual?) libertarians as ones for which liberty seem right and self-evident and have never needed to rationalize it, naturally attracted to libertarianism if you will. I see rational libertarian as ones who reached the philosophy after a longer process of thought analyzing politics, history, and economy as they see it.

I would expect the former to be more prevalent in countries with a longer tradition of liberty. I generally see myself in the latter classification. I came to libertarianism not necessarily organically, but through reading massive amounts of things and thinking about them. Though it may be strange in my case, I am a deontological libertarian, and I assume a good number who came to libertarianism by learning economics, for example, to be of a somewhat more utilitarian bent.

More recently, I think there are few purely in one category or other, but a fusion of the two with one dominant. I would expect most people have some basic deontological values. I would expect most deontological libertarianism to have at least a sliver of utilitarianism in them. I expect that you cannot rationally reach full libertarianism if you don’t have, even deep down, a strain of instinct and a basic value of liberty. And I think many instinctive libertarians, at least occasionally, engage in some rational fact base analysis.

Finally there most likely is a difference to be made between more and less “dogmatic” libertarians. They both want liberty, but getting there can be more or less flexible. There are off course problems with both. Rigid adherence to some very strict principles may not fully work in the real world to promote liberty widely enough, but excess flexibility may make the principles worthless. Another way of putting it is compromise vs no compromise libertarians. This off course assuming compromise was possible which it is not, certainly not with the left. But if it were, let’s say, some libertarians would favor it some would still not.

Off course being too flexible can turn you into the Nick Gillespie of libertarians. In the end, you do you, it is a not-that-free-country-but-whatever.

Does it matter? Not necessarily. For deontological liberty lovers, it can be that outcomes in the future and history in the past is not that relevant, if one sees liberty as an end, not a mean. If liberty is the purpose, whether socialism works (it goddam doesn’t) is not really relevant – except in debate with utilitarian socialists (bunch of morons if you ask me). Although it helps to keep in mind the history, most would not support liberty any less had communists not committed genocide.

Utilitarians may be more focused on the history, on the outcomes and they may be more rational than instinctive. Although, any libertarian worth his salt, even utilitarians, need to keep in mind that means do not always justify ends and that means matter.

Although on some level this can cause a bit of conflict. I can see a deontological libertarian mistrusting utilitarians, in that if the utilitarian starts believing liberty is not the best for “utility” than they will abandon it. If liberty is an end in itself, than seeing it as a mean to an end is dubious. Off course one can see a hybrid when the end goal is maximizing liberty and one can have a utilitarian view of that. Although this has many traps, because many things that may temporarily seem to favor liberty do not in the long run.

Overall I would say that, for a majority, both means and ends matter, a liberty can be seen as a bit of both. Good in itself, but also leading to other good things.

Similarly, there may be more mistrust between the mostly instinctive, who need no justification for liberty and see rationalizing it similar to all that utility talk. On the other hand, people used to rationalize things may mistrust people who go mostly on instinct. While it is hard to be rational without some instinctual part due to basic human nature limiting pure rationality, I am not convinced of going purely by gut. People do need to occasionally analyze their biases and take a critical look at their views. Everyone has biases. I suffer from more self doubt than many I feel, but I think everyone should examine their premise and their bias. Most people don’t.

While I feel many libertarians get this, one note I would make is that many “normies” to appropriate the word do not. This can influence how one spreads the good word with the normies, who are mostly utilitarian in nature. And this is something the instinctive deontological libertarians mat not be good at. This leads in general to the opinion that is not even worth trying, which may be true in itself. But it may be worth a shot once in a while, just in case.  It is hard with normies. They don’t get it instinctively, but if you try some pure “logic” that won’t work either. You will not convince people with zero utilitarian arguments, but neither will you with zero moral arguments, some principle arguments give your views strength. And working on principle, ethics, basics, can be more convincing that raw data.  Someone without at least a few principles can be dangerous. Principles to anchor us, to have impose some limits and restrictions, like this will not do no matter the utility. The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas and all that jazz.

This is again one of those thinking out loud posts which I am not perfectly happy with but decided to submit anyway. While I am not sure I am as convinced of the categories I presented, I think this can be a start to a discussion or two. So… the comments are open. Comment away. And yes, I am telling you what to do.