Why are you an authoritarian?

[Damocles]

Companion thread to the other “why are you” threads.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Well, this forum seems to think I'm an authoritarian because I believe the state has a role in protecting people against their own worst impulses and encouraging them to be moral.

[S019]

I believe that government has a responsibility to protect people from making bad choices and protect them from others’ bad choices impacting them. Though I’ve always thought of myself as more of a paternalist then a true authoritarian.

[Schiff for Senate]

I believe that some Americans, if left unchecked, would make decisions that could endanger or harm others, and I believe the government does have a duty to stop those people from doing so: hence my support for gun control and mask/vaccine mandates, among other things.

I used to be naive and philosophically consider myself a 'libertarian' because 'why won't the government leave people alone?' Answer: if the government did, our problems would be worse tenfold. COVID19 would spread even more, gun violence would go through the roof, among many other disasters. I mean you only have to look at the events of the past year or two to see just how crazy a lot of Americans are and why they obviously shouldn't be in charge of anything.

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

Ooh! Finally one for me!

I believe the modern world has unleashed forces that, if directed only by private will or interest, could lead to immense physical and social devastation. Manmade climate change is the biggest, but not the only, example of this phenomenon. Pollution, monopolization, social atomization, criminal violence, and private armies (an idea which sounds cartoonish only when we live in a modern and stable society) all speak to the need of a supra-social entity responsible to "the people".

At the smaller level, most aspects of human life would be rendered unrecognizable and unworkable if we reverted to some anal and out of touch vision of liberty as defined only by the sacrosanctity of the human individual. Imagine trying to discuss road repairs or teacher salaries when a faux Jeffersonian cries incessantly at your city council meeting that all taxation is theft.

This is not to say that I support a strong-man. Far from it. Autocratic despotism only reproduces the problem, but we have egomaniacal presidents run amok instead of egomaniacal CEOs run amok. And anarchism appears naive and fanciful; the Balkans, the Caucasus, and the Middle East paint a far clearer picture of what happens when the state dissolves. Rather, if power is indvitable, it must be democratically accountable and bound by laws.

[John Dule]

This is best answered by showing rather than telling.

When extreme libertarians post here, they are quickly exposed as unserious trolls and banned. When extreme authoritarians post here, they stay for three years and write 15,000 posts about how there should be a national butter knife registry.