Why are many libertarians not marching in the BLM protests?

…as answered on Quora….

Many?

Any?

I cannot speak for others. I know why I regard the movement with deep suspicion. 

And would not join their marches, sit-ins and riots.

I am very concerned about the police abuse of citizens. I made most of my family members deeply uncomfortable with my views on the subject for the past ten years. But I am against unlawful killings regardless of the races of the victims or the perpetrators. Black Lives Matter activists seem only interested when the victim is black. So, we are not simpatico.

But mainly I despise initiated violence, disruptions of the peace — whether done by the police or by mobs. These protests have turned to riot all over the United States. Burnings, looting, assaults — despicable actions, largely against innocents. I am against all this. “Categorically,” as we used to say, we who lived through the Nixon Era.

Now, for one thing, the evidence from social and political science is that rioting reduces support for the cause over the long haul. Rioting in the late Sixties led to Nixon’s two wins, which was surely not what the rioters wanted.

Or was it?

But it is more basic than that. Rioting is evil, and a protest is OK only if it is lawful and obeys the rule of law. In America, we make much of the right to PEACEABLY assemble, and rightly so. Well, rioting is not peaceable assembly, and the protesters’ commandeering of private and public property without permission (license) is not covered in the right we know and love. And think about it, earnest protestors: you may not throw a brick, a punch, or a Molotov cocktail, but if after nearly every one of your protests others horn in and wreak havoc, committing mayhem, then you are doing it wrong.

Libertarians are smart enough not to get caught up in this mess.

Why aren’t the protesters?

Well, they get caught up in a mania. And they follow cues: from the corporate media, from a few politicians, from race hustlers, and from the madness of crowds.

Libertarians have many faults. Sometimes I wonder how a group of people with the highest average IQs among all the major political cohorts can be so uniformly ineffective. How dumb can smart people be?

Well, not dumb enough to fall for the major media push for a race war.

twv