Posted on 01/10/2002 7:20:15 PM PST by southern rock
O.K. So I am sitting in a bar, having a few $5 pitchers of beer with a buddy of mine, and we end up talking about a hypothetical situation I thought up a while back.
Let's say you have a group of really liberal thinking people. They decide to start a commune on a large piece of private property. Maybe each member owns an equal share of this land, or maybe it is owned by the the commune founder. Whatever. On their land, they are full-blown communists. There is no private property allowed. Everything is communally owned. They live by "from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs". Guns are prohibited on the land, they don't beleive in them. They are also nudists. (Play along with me here, I am going to throw in every liberal, counter-culture thing I can think of). They have wild, perverted orgies every night. Homosexuality is tolerated. Anyway, you get the picture. I am going to leave wether they do drugs or not out of it, because I don't want to get into the whole legal thing. Suffice to say we don't know if they do drugs. If they do, they keep it so private, nobody knows it. They consider themselves "progressives".
However, and this is a big however, they have no desire to inflict their lifestyle on anyone else, or on society at large. They are very big on minding their own buisness. When they leave their property, they put their clothes on, and behave well. They simply want to live the way they choose on their own land. They don't vote for politicians who would promote their agenda and lifestyle on a local or national scale. They respect the private property of others, they simply don't want private property amongst themselves in their private little world. Their land, however, is definately private property.
So, my question is, do you consider these people liberals or conservatives? There is a very good argument to be made for calling them conservatives. They mind their own buisness. After all, are not liberals compelled to inflict their lifestyle and morality on society at large? Real liberals have the whole "we know what's best" attitude.
Maybe these folks are neither liberal or conservative. Maybe they are a hybred. Some might say they are libertarian, but I can't see libertarians wanting to live like that.
The debate is about the nature of liberalism, and conservatism. Does simply respecting private property rights, which these hypothetical people do (on a societal level), make you conservative? Does being sexulally immoral and libertine alone make you a liberal, or do you have to be totolitarian as well? Was I drinking too much when I thought this up? You guys tell me.
At $5.00 a pitcher, I'd say you were drinking swill.
Who the hell goes drinkin' and starts talking about nekkid liberals?
And as a constitutional libertarian, I see nothing wrong with their rather sicko lifestyle, as long as they stick to nonviolent, noncoersive perversions, and don't 'scare the horses'.
What you've done is discover that there are social conservatives and radical individualists that both can be called "conservatives". It's nothing new, this sort of debate raged back in the '50s when "fusionism" was the argument. The Cold War used to keep such debates in the background.
Chronicles often runs pieces on this sort of issue. You might want to try:
I'm gonna bookmark this and look at it again when I'm not so tired.
According to what he posted, they all have real jobs. Stalin couldn't force EVERYONE in Soviet Russia to work to support the commune, but you don't think you could find a dozen good, hardworking people who would choose to live on your commune (and risk expulsion if they didn't work)?
I'm not a beer snob. I drink quantity, not quality. And this is the best I can do as far as deep thinking goes, over the loud country music and bar fights. So let's just play along. Drink a pitcher of swill if you must. :-)
Yes. (Sorry, I just finished a discussion of logic in my math class.)
HeeHeeHee!!!
ROF!!!
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