However, it strikes me that in making the attempt to be maximally charitable to those who disagree, you can end up arguing the other side better than they did themselves!

Humans are ingenious at telling “just-so” stories. This argumentative charity thing is becoming overly time-consuming.

I don’t know what the answer is (aside from heavy usage of direct quotation).

As societies became larger and more pluralistic it becomes unrealistic to have one set of standards for morality (and barbarism). In Free Cities going forward, we will encourage the development of voluntary communities with mutual aid societies each of which can (and will) identify their own moral boundaries. As an educator I’ve long realized that education should be fundamentally about habits, attitudes, norms, morals, and culture – the academic part is trivial by comparison. Voluntary communities will want to educate their children in good habits so as to reduce the long-term costs associated with poor behavior. Most health care costs are due to behavioral decisions (most costs associated with chronic diseases, accidents, addictions, substance abuse, STDs, obesity, violence, are all due to behavioral choices). In voluntary communities, populations with good habits will collectively have a much higher standard of living. Entrepreneurs will provide systems in education, insurance/mutual aid, health care and wellness, crime prevention and punishment, surveillance, law and governance, etc. that will result in more effective solutions to all of these realms than what we have now.

Such a “libertarian” solution will have far less barbarism than does the U.S. today – even though some of the communities will be more tolerant with respect to drugs, sexual preference, etc. than is the U.S. today. Others, of course, will be much more conservative. The result will approximate Nozick’s “Utopia of Utopias.”

That isn’t contrary to the truth. But it is a call that when pursuing the truth one do things like engage someone’s strongest argument, not their weakest. Not to assume malignant intent, &c. Perhaps it is even more persuasive that way, but that is not the point.

If you mean instead that they don’t have very much power, that is something else; then you can start plotting schemes to manipulate and seize power–just like everyone else apparently.

But I think Nietzsche was as wrong as Thrasymachus, and both fail to explain the larger part of human activity. Power is one good among many, not the only or the highest good.

My experience is that your being way too charitable to all parties.

Isn’t it possible that liberals pretend to care about the oppressor-oppressed axis while using that pretense to grab power? Isn’t it possible that conservatives just use rhetoric about the barbarism-civilization axis to propel them to political victory? Isn’t it possible that libertarians just debate the coercion-freedom axis to expand their own personal power and avoid obligations that would otherwise be imposed on them and let those obligations and costs fall on others?

My experience tells me that Nietzsche’s “Will To Power” (or the simpler and less nuanced “Might Makes Right”) explains the beliefs, rhetoric, and actions of the vast majority of people far better than your charitable description. While you’re right that the uncharitable description certainly won’t convince anyone and in fact will close the doors to any discussion, an unrealistic view of what motivates people will waste effort as well.

The purpose of books like Brennan’s is not to convince those in other camps but instead to fire up people in his camp in order to strive for power. As Brennan notes, “Yet when in power, the two camps act much the same.” The simplest explanation for that is that power is the goal of both camps. Political victory and power are the ends, not the means.

“My idea is that every specific body strives to become master over all space and to extend its force (–its will to power:) and to thrust back all that resists its extension. But it continually encounters similar efforts on the part of other bodies and ends by coming to an arrangement (“union”) with those of them that are sufficiently related to it: thus they then conspire together for power. And the process goes on–” Nietzsche, from The Will to Power, s.636, Walter Kaufmann transl.

I think that any plan to change thought and the political and economic trajectory we’re on needs to keep the concept of power directly in the crosshairs at all times. Unfortunately, for libertarians, they are the least well suited for this task.