Authoritarian versus Libertarian morality (my stupid pet theory)

While almost everyone talks about whether people are left or right economically, it's important to note how someone is morally when it comes to authority.

As the title implies, this is an unproven pet theory which I made after watching George Lakoff videos on youtube at 2 AM in the morning.

The problem is that Lakoff tries to split morality into the different camps of "conservative" and "liberal" because he assumes that politics works like a straight line, it doesn't. Politics works like this:

and morality is the up and down line.

How did Hitler Think?

Yes we seriously have to answer this question. What makes authoritarians (Hitler and otherwise) think they should have so much authority, and why do libertarians (no not like the Libertarian Party, just libertarian in relation to authority in general) hate it so much?

The reason lies in how we think of other people, whether or not we think other people are moral or intelligent enough to run the world determine our outlooks on life. So going back to the original question, How did Hitler view the world?

Well I never read Mein Keimpf so I can't tell for sure, but chances are he thought people are corrupt, immoral, stupid, and of course, evil, so they can't run their affairs in the way they wish and need to succumb to the absolute role of a dictatorship.

Authoritarians and Libertarians

Based on this idea, we have two different outlooks on life, and since I'm assuming most people aren't very authoritarian, I'll start with that one:

Authoritarian Morality

The tenets go something like this:

• Children are born "evil" in the sense that they don't know right from wrong
• Children need to be disciplined to be taught to what's good and moral
  
• Someone who's disciplined enough, can survive in the world, someone whose not, can't
• Those "moral" should rule over the "non-moral" (since the "non-moral" can't rule themselves)
  
• The "moral" should be given lots of authority to discipline the "non-moral"
  

Crazy stuff right? But the logic makes sense, if most people are evil and stupid, why should they be able to make decisions? That's the reason why authoritarians hate democracy, it allows for the "non-moral" to make policy and wreck the country. Just as a final note, "non-moral" is just a catch-all term to mean people who are evil, stupid, corrupt etc.

Libertarian Morality

The tenets are almost the exact opposite:

• Children are born inherently "good" and know right from wrong
• External pressures or circumstances turn people "evil" or immoral
• Since people know right from wrong, they should be given freedom to rule themselves
  
• Interfering with people's freedom is only going to make them worse off since people are inherently good
  

That's libertarianism in a nutshell, the idea that people should rule over themselves because most people are good.

One or the Other?

Now obviously libertarian morality sounds great, I mean who would want to go against freedom? But the truth is, people have both authoritarian and libertarian morality, and for good reason.

Imagine a situation where society has become so libertarian that crimes like rape and murder simply go unpunished. That every crime is completely the fault of an external force. It would be chaos, and the rule of law was designed to prevent that from happening. Likewise, we can imagine a situation where martial law is implemented and completely represses society.

Taken in extremes, both are can be bad which is why people typically have a little of both. What defines people, is how much more of one they have then another.