Re: Blaming the Victim

AJ — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 21:26:56 GMT

This is interesting, along the same lines as the "proximate causes" explication but with an emotional kick for common activist types.

Blaming the Victim

Sage — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 19:20:21 GMT

Libertarians really need to start using the “blaming the victim” rhetoric when people attack the free market for the negative consequences of statism.

For example, when people say the current health care system is the product of the free market, you can excoriate them for blaming the victim, because it is the free market being injured and abused, while government intervention is the real culprit.

Or when people say the Great Depression, or the current crisis is the result of the free market, you can play the "blame the victim" card, because in those situations it was the free market that was crippled by socialist interventions. It's the classic statist ploy: destroy the free market by violently imposing central planning, and then add insult to injury by blaming the negative results of statism on some non-existent free market.

Also, this naturally gives you an opportunity to explain the myth of the "actually-existing free market." We do not have a free market, but a highly regulated interventionist mixed economy.

Political Theory

Re: Blaming the Victim

Blaming the Victim