Myself on the other hand, I believe in my own ability to be fair in judgement, to straddle that difficult line between compassion and personal responsibility. I believe it IS possible to leave someone bleeding in the street because they chose to endanger themself, their family, their community, and the quality of life of everyone on this planet.
That's a position that will strike many as arrogant, entitled, and downright wrong. I can understand that position, and still choose to disagree with it. As an ideal, I hold personal responsibility in the highest regard, while still understanding that life hits you hard sometimes in ways you cant possible predict.
When you take a black and white perspective like this, it's evident you don't have any intention of understanding your fellow man's position. In this way, you yourself are proving logically inconsistent. You have deemed yourself intelligent enough to judge me as being wrong, in my decision to judge others?
So let me get this straight, I am wrong because I believe myself intelligent, rational, thoughtful, and considerate enough, to pass fair judgment on to others. Yet you are not wrong for your rational and thoughtful analysis and subsequent judgment of my belief? That's not just logically inconsistent, it's hypocritical.
Regarding your example:
Again, things are not as black and white as you would like them to be. Each scenario takes a requires a multitude of factors be considered.
Yes, the driver chose to drive in bad weather, which certainly put themselves at risk. I tend to have no problem helping people, who just hurt themselves. But what about the other drivers? Did he put them at risk too? Sure, but those drivers implicitly took the same risk, when they chose to driver in bad weather.
There's an additional consideration, that of the acceptability of someone's behavior. Driving is a socially accepted practice, and one that is sometimes a necessary task. I can extend compassion for them, by assuming the needed to engage in this socially accepted practice of driving, despite the risks.
How in the world do you arrive at that conclusion? Personally, I can't imagine anything being further from the truth...
There are a lot of things outside of ones control in life, and while you can try to shape the direction in your life with personal choice, not everyone starts from the same spot, not all situations are the same, and not all risks pay off.
TBH, that sounds like a complete caricature of a Libertarian thinker from where I'm sitting. Maybe there are people like that out there, and maybe some of them self-identify as Libertarians (or libertarians) but there's nothing inherent in the Libertarian world-view that would lead to such a position.
There are a lot of things outside of ones control in life, and while you can try to shape the direction in your life with personal choice, not everyone starts from the same spot, not all situations are the same, and not all risks pay off.
That's absolutely true, and of the Libertarians I know, I don't think I know a single one who would contest that.
Source: am a Libertarian.
As a class of people, there is only one factor that ties all of them together under a single ideological umbrella. By all other measures, their opinions can vary wildly.
The capital-L Libertarians, otherwise known as the members of the Libertarian Party, are just the tip of the small-l libertarian iceberg. For those who have chosen to abandon political participation and evangelism, you may never even realize they are libertarian at all.
There are some godawful douchebag libertarians. There are criminal fraud libertarians. And there are also libertarians that are outwardly indistinguishable from everybody else, aside from little things like laughing at something when a joke was not intended.
Do you remember Dennis, the 37-year-old not-an-old-woman from Monty Python and the Search for the Holy Grail? Do you recall how he was attempting to explain the anarcho-syndicalist commune to King Arthur? Anarcho-syndicalists are a type of libertarian. Just as Arthur dismissed him as completely useless, modern mainstream politics ignores and marginalizes most libertarian groups. And they do it to each other, as well. No one is better at denouncing a particular type of libertarianism than another type of libertarian.
I would guess that most of those people are not terribly well educated in the basis of Libertarian thought. That's a pretty naive interpretation of it anyway.
Anyway, I'd love to continue this conversation, but it's probably veering close to (or into) "off topic" territory, so I'll just drop this here.