Posted on 03/17/2013 11:13:56 AM PDT by Rufus2007
Well played, GW.
“Republicans have been arguing — social conservatives and libertarian free-market conservatives — since the 1950s, when the National Review was founded on the idea of the fusion of the two,” he continued. “It has worked before with Ronald Reagan. It can work again. What I did see at CPAC was the rise of the libertarian strand of Republicanism, which has an affected foreign policy that is a pullback from nation-building and other ambitions aboard that they never countenance from government at home, and a sense of ‘live and let live’ with subjects such as decriminalization of certain drugs and gay marriage.”
Whether or not it would be a good thing, that foreign policy pullback never actually happens. The clear lines that parties out of power draw get blurred when they win elections.
Parties in power really get to like using all the weapons, so all the talk about a "more modest foreign policy" remains talk, and not talk one hears much in the corridors of power.
Also, an ambitious foreign policy is a way to get around political stalemates at home. And of course, things happens overseas that we don't have any control over, and so we get dragged into conflicts that we may not have wanted to be involved in.
Sodom and Gomorrah politics would have been an argument between to elements of the left, arguing over taxes.
Social Conservatives would not be a part of the argument, that is very similar to the left’s and libertarian reshaping of modern America as we conservatives are told more and more to submit, to join with the libertarians and give up all this God stuff, and fighting for families and life, and marriage and annoying all of the hip young voters.
If FR had a thumbs-up feature, I would give it to your post.
The libertarian (note I use the small "l") position is to reduce government spending, subsidies, and government regulation. This reduction needs to be accomplished intelligently. For example, reducing bank regulation while maintaining deposit insurance just guarantees massive expenses to the taxpayers. Allowing welfare while not penalizing bad lifestyle choices likewise produces massive expenses to the taxpayers.
One thought experiment to illustrate the divide between social and fiscal conservatives:
Let's say you are a senator about to vote on a bill to cut back on the welfare state by barring any increase in benefits for any additional children conceived after the women starts on welfare, and limiting the lifetime number of years the woman is eligible for benefits.You are the deciding vote. If you vote yes it passes, if you vote no or abstain it doesn't pass.
Over the long term, the bill will greatly reduce welfare dependency. Over the short term, the bill will likely increase the number of abortions among welfare women.
How do you vote, yes or no?
Homosexualizing the military? Recognizing “married” lesbians and homosexuals and soon to be polygamy, which the military must decide on?
Abortion as a personal choice? Open borders and eliminating the Border Patrol and the INS?
Libertarians have quite an agenda.
That would be their sin, not mine.
Actually, they DO have some constitutional power regarding marriage.
No my arguement was and is that nastyness is coming from your ilk. If suggesting our forefathers, a group most libertarians revere, would have had libertarians "lynched" for their beliefs isn't inflamatory then what is?
I suppose, for total accuracy in my original post, I could have listed all the ways anti-libertarians act uncivilly but it would have been an awful long post.
No they weren't. The people of Sodom wanted to rape Lot's guests. Violent criminality has no place in any libertarian philosophy I've ever heard.
This why it’s so difficult. I am very conservative socially and fiscally but at the Federal level I want virtually no restrictions on the states. I want a very small Federal government with the states allowed to restrict almost anything they want. That way people could live where they are comfortable and let the results of bad ideas fall on the ones doing it.
The contract clause does not give them the power to strike down state laws on marriage. They can exempt them from- or require- recognition by other states.
They have some power over all the things I mentioned.
The Whiskey Tax being the best example.
George Will Who?
I think the the loss of the libertarian streak in the US is a national tragedy. The so called hippie free left turned into big government,nanny state socialists.
Many of the social conservatives are more then willing to use the power of the state to enforce their morality.
That said it’s not equal. The left is now gaining traction on how much we can earn,eat,drive,smoke...you name it they have a rule. Using the federal government to shut down carbon emissions will give them total control.
Trying to break the Catholic Church is also a high priority.
A small aside....the Chicago Blues Fest used to be a free wheeling carnival. A couple of years ago the city figured out ...shudders...people were bringing in their own booze so not to buy the warn $6.00 beers. So a faceless bureaucrat had the entire event fenced off for “security reasons” and everyone has to be lined up and searched. No tents...umbrellas...flags.... Just a lot of people placidly lined up in the hot sun to be searched by some joker in a uniform. ...with nary a peep. What the hell happened to the land of the free?
That is a scenario that I believe most libertarians in the republican party would agree with. Unfortunately too many Republicans see the federal government as a tool to be used to pursue their policy desires. Thus we have both Democrats and Republicans pushing to increase the size and scope of the federal government. Democrats (and many Republican politicians) for reasons of pure evil and Republicans in general out of the misguided notion that big Fed can actually help people.
Think about how silly that post is.
The members of that mob would have been some of the regular people of the town, the libertarians and leftists who’s inner beliefs and tolerance, and anti-social conservatism shaped the town, they weren’t at the house espousing political philosophy.
Even libertarians can be violent, ask the typical pusher, or pimp, or porn producer, or abortionist, if they ever get drunk and rowdy.
Thought on Liberty is not a new idea. Libertarianism did not begin this.
CONCERNING CHRISTIAN LIBERTY
by Martin Luther
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1911/1911-h/1911-h.htm#link2H_4_0001
Martin Luther on Liberty written in 1520
excerpt letter from Martin Luther to Pope Leo X:
“beware of listening to those sirens who make you out to be not simply a man, but partly a god, so that you can command and require whatever you will. It will not happen so, nor will you prevail. You are the servant of servants, and more than any other man, in a most pitiable and perilous position. Let not those men deceive you who pretend that you are lord of the world; who will not allow any one to be a Christian without your authority; who babble of your having power over heaven, hell, and purgatory. These men are your enemies and are seeking your soul to destroy it, as Isaiah says, “My people, they that call thee blessed are themselves deceiving thee.” They are in error who raise you above councils and the universal Church; they are in error who attribute to you alone the right of interpreting Scripture. All these men are seeking to set up their own impieties in the Church under your name, and alas! Satan has gained much through them in the time of your predecessors.”
“In brief, trust not in any who exalt you, but in those who humiliate you. For this is the judgment of God: “He hath cast down the mighty from their seat, and hath exalted the humble.” See how unlike Christ was to His successors, though all will have it that they are His vicars.”
—
“I cannot bear with laws for the interpretation of the word of God, since the word of God, which teaches liberty in all other things, ought not to be bound.”
I have to strongly disagree with your assertions that Libertarianism is inherently immoral or even amoral. You are conflating two very different things – liberty and morality. The absence of liberty does not lead to morality – quite the contrary – it stifles it’s most powerful expressions. Likewise, the existence liberty does not lead to immorality – it provides oxygen to enable fresh inspirations.
The Bill of Rights is a study in Libertarianism and is a bulwark against the tyranny of the majority against the Natural Rights of any minority. It doesn’t try to enumerate all Natural Rights as if they're granted by their mention on paper by government and not from God – but it ensures them by restricting government from encroaching on the liberties of individuals.
One definition of Libertarianism states:
"Libertarianism is a set of related political philosophies that emphasize the primacy of individual liberty, political freedom, and voluntary association. Libertarians advocate a society with a greatly reduced state or no state at all."Friedman, David D. (2008). "libertarianism," The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics, 2nd EditionSo maybe it’s time that you take a fresh look at the benefits of individual liberty over government force.
You insist on straw-man arguments.
The defining characteristic of libertarianism is the "non-aggression principle", which states that no human being holds the right to initiate force or fraud against the person or property of another human being.
Anybody in favor of violent rape is not acting on libertarian principles.
Libertarianism promotes leftism not only at the state level but at the federal level as well.
Being libertarian means supporting the radical leftist agenda at all levels of government, school boards, city government, county, state, and federal.
Being anti-social conservative means always fighting it, whether about which school books are being chosen, or in opening the borders and allowing homosexuality in the United States military.
Libertarianism exists to change social policy and to end social conservatism and to defeat it, while retaining conservative economics, which of course is impossible, because you cannot have small government and few social programs without social conservatism.
America is a democracy, the more broken people, the more broken families, the more broken communities, the fewer Christians, the more immigration, then the more democrat voters, not fewer, more, we have watched that for 50 years.
What in the world are you going on about?
When you see a drunken mob you want to announce that no libertarians can be in it because they are non-violent, as though it is some religious order?
If you interviewed drunken mobs, you would find that libertarianism is prevalent among them, not social conservatism.
Only a libertarian could be so ridiculous as to defend homosexuality and abortion and polygamy and drugs gambling and hookers and every sin known to man almost, and pretend that it isn’t immoral.
You wouldn’t have lasted a day preaching your junk to 1790 Americans.
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