In an earlier blog entry, I referred to the Articles of Confederation as the ultimate expression of Libertarian thought and noted their complete failure. Of course, the term libertarian was not used back then; what we call Libertarianism now is merely a repackaged form of “classical Liberalism”, much like today’s Tea Party is merely a repackaged form of the “Religious Right” that plagued American politics in the 1980s. Same shit, different label. Now two channels on YouTube, Extra Credits and the Alternative History Hub, have teamed up to give the Articles of Confederation the public beatdown they so deserved but never seemed to have gotten. Why not? Perhaps because their failure shows that the Founding Fathers of the USA were not after all the nearly infallible saints they are often depicted as, though I suppose George Washington comes close. Anyway, here are those videos:

The whole premise behind Libertarianism is that human nature is good enough that with almost no oversight from a higher authority, people (and states) can cooperate as individuals in a free market to achieve good together. But the simple fact that the Articles of Confederation could not even last ONE DECADE to keep the USA stable and strong should have totally discredited and buried that ideology forever, because human nature is CORRUPT and needs to be restrained by a state to limit its damage. So why didn’t that discrediting happen? Why instead did Libertarianism rise again in the 1970s in the form of a Libertarian Party that persists to this day? Perhaps because ALMOST NO ONE BOTHERS TO STUDY WHAT REALLY HAPPENED IN THE UNITED STATES BETWEEN 1781 AND 1787! Clearly, we need to change that. Once an ideology is disproven by actual historical events, it should never be tolerated in politics again. Insanity has been defined as doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting different results. As someone who used to admire libertarians before learning how absurd their ideas and the consequences thereof really are, I feel like a formerly insane person who has been cured. I hope it happens to others as well.