Weren't you one of the few freepers who supported this guy's election a few years back?
Posted on 08/21/2007 11:41:49 AM PDT by DesScorp
I just recently caught up with the exchange on conservatism and the culture wars between Brink Lindsey and Ramesh Ponnuru, in which Lindsey exhorts conservatives to give up any further efforts in the culture war, which he deems finished. And I also heard some of a Cato Institute talk that featured Lindsey and David Brooks, who agrees with Lindsey on this point. I agree with Peter Wood who commented on PBC that if the culture war is over, efforts to reform the university are pointless, and we obviously don't think such efforts are pointless or we wouldn't be here at PBC. Neither would the Manhattan Institute have initiated its Minding the Campus feature. Neither would Regnery be issuing its politically incorrect guides to various subjects. And so forth.
I also think that Lindsey's view of modern life as the “exuberantly pluralistic pursuit of personal fulfillment through an ever-expanding division of labor” is utterly soulless.
Also, Lindsey made some remarks in his part of the exchange, that the Right should be embarrassed about previous racism, sexism, and prudery. I don't have the exchange in front of me now, but I think that's close to what he said. In the National Review I read as a teenager, edited by William Buckley, I don't recall any of that. I recall its being sound, elegant, rational, cultured, with high intellectual standards. Lindsey should be prevailed upon to give specific examples of what he means by the sins of the Right in these areas.
(Excerpt) Read more at phibetacons.nationalreview.com ...
On thing about socoalists: is they are all victims. Nothing is every their fault. It’s always “those people who don’t do they duty to society and support us”
If Massachusetts is so anti-military, then on my commute home every day, why do I see all those signs on highway overpasses welcoming back family members from Iraq? Why do I see highway overpasses decorated with the flags of the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps?
Take a look at an attempt by Acton to define liberty. It tracks John Paul’s definition as the right of a man to do what he ought to do.
“What did Acton mean by “liberty”? In one place he said it was “the assurance that every man shall be protected in doing what he believes his duty, against the influence of authority and majorities, custom and opinion.”
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig6/flood2.html
If we can believe the writings of people like Joseph Story on the subject, it was intended that such control be forever excluded from the powers exercised by the federal government, and to the extent that it is exercised it be the exclusive domain of the States. The argument seems calculated to render that an impossibility.
social liberalism has been accompanied by the rise of the all-encompassing nanny
As does social conservatism. It's all down to Two Concepts of Liberty
(Iasiah) Berlin distinguished between two forms or concepts of liberty - negative liberty and positive liberty - and argued that the latter concept has often been used to cover up abuse - leading to the curtailment of people's negative liberties "for their own good".Social conservatives, like socal liberals, promote posive rights to help society - they both have good intentions that they know how to run peoples live.Negative and positive rights
Under the theory of positive and negative rights, a negative right is a right not to be subjected to an action of another human being, or group of people, such as a state, usually in the form of abuse or coercion. A positive right is a right to be provided with something through the action of another person or the state.To state the difference more formally, if 'A' has a negative right against 'B' then 'B' must refrain from acting in a way that would prevent 'A' from doing 'x'. If 'A' has a positive right against 'B', then 'B' must assist 'A' to do 'x' if 'A' is not able to do 'x' without that assistance. For example, a negative right to life would require others to refrain from killing a person. A positive right to life would require others act to save the life of someone who would otherwise die.
Negative rights may be used to justify political rights such as freedom of speech, property, habeas corpus, freedom from violent crime, freedom of worship, a fair trial, freedom from slavery and the right to bear arms.
Positive rights may be used to justify public education, health care, social security or a minimum standard of living.
Yah, I used the big L there. I suspect that self-identified libertarians are a big chunk of the Republican party. Together with conservatives we might just be a majority of the base. : )
However, we just keep accepting the dunderheads the party feeds us as candidates. Mel Martinez. Ptooooi!
One of the problems with libertarianism is that it can’t be enforced. Marxism can be enforced. It doesn’t work, but it can be enforced. The 20th century was filled with Marxist regimes which were failures internally, but lasted for decades and even succeeded in threatening to annex much of the world by the point of the gun.
The problem with libertarianism is that it creates a void, which is filled by oppressive leftist ideologies. If somehow we wake up tomorrow and find that libertarianism has been magically instituted as our nation’s governing principle, it won’t last very long. It will soon give way to leftism. Human nature will drive it in that direction.
Once people are free to do whatever they damn well please regardless of the common good or traditional morality, or, for that matter, the effects on children who must witness this behavior, they won’t remain responsible citizens for very long. Yes, some will. There are always unique individuals. But what are the odds that a man who contracts AIDS because he got sodomized by three dozen other men at a bathhouse will be such a responsible citizen that he’ll reject the idea of demanding socialized medicine to treat his ailment? Is he the type of man who will say, “I’m responsible for my ailment. My own behavior caused it. Therefore, I’ll take full responsibility for my actions and not demand help from the taxpayers”? Libertarianism expects people to behave and react that way. That’s why it always backfires, and leads to more government, not less.
Take the homosexual agenda as an example. Not all that long ago, homosexuals stayed in the closet. Laws or cultural taboos prohibited them from parading down the street dressed as women, or wearing a g-string or nothing at all. They couldn’t go to the ballpark and grope and kiss in front of baseball capped kids. Bathhouses and homosexual bars were raided and closed down. Libertarians joined liberals in insisting that these legal and societal limits on homosexuals were oppressive.
So the sodomy laws were tossed asunder and homosexuality was freed from the closet. Less government and more freedom all around, right? Well, not exactly.
Those relatively minor restrictions on behavior have been replaced by greater restrictions on behavior. Those taboos against the irresponsible behavior of a few have been replaced by taboos against responsible behavior and honest discussion of the issues. Children, once protected from the destructive effects of homosexual conduct as much as possible, are now indoctrinated in it.
Homosexuals are now free to do as they damn well please. However, the rest of us have to be careful of what we say, lest we run afoul of hate speech laws. We have to be wary, because even a mild homosexual joke can cost us our job. If we run a private business or organization, we can be expected to be hauled into court until we agree to provide homosexuals with everything they want. Even if we win, as the Boy Scouts narrowly did in a 5-4 ruling, we’ll be hit with another lawsuit, and another, and another, until legal bills and ridicule from the leftist media wear us down. Own an apartment? Better be prepared to rent to that nice homosexual couple with the whips & chains. Doesn’t matter if you’re a Christian. The rights of homosexuals are now more important than the 1st Amendment in much of the country.
The dating service e-Harmony is currently bogged down in court amidst a demand that they provide same sex matchmaking. Bed & breakfasts will be sued for not providing homosexual couples with the bridal suite.
Belong to a church that regards homosexuality as a sin? You might want to consider changing religions if you wish to ever be appointed to a government post. Did you refuse to take your small kids to DisneyWorld on “gay day”, or to the Padres game on “gay night”, because you didn’t want them to see such behavior? If so, Senator Feingold has some questions he’d like to interrogate you with. Besides, your feeble attempts to protect your kids are now opposed by the state itself. Check out school curricula in much of the country.
Now, libertarians will insist that they didn’t mean for all this to happen. They just wanted to repeal the sodomy laws and let homos go off in private and do their thing without having to worry about alleged sex police kicking down their door in midnight raids. They just wanted to let consenting adults have sex clubs and meeting places without being judged by “puritanical” society. They never intended for there to be speech codes, attacks on the Boy Scouts, a new plethora of draconian anti-discrimination laws, government crackdowns on “homophobia”, homosexualization of the public schools, and so forth. But that’s what we all got.
Why? Because of human nature. Conservatives do restrict personal behavior on occasion, but we do so because history has taught us that such behavior is destructive and, once unleashed, leads to more government than before. The reasons are simple. Libertarians are a tiny fraction of the population. Leftists are a good sized minority with clout well above their population numbers due to their concentrations in academia, the media, and the legal community. Leftists have enormous clout, while the only clout libertarians have is in providing people like Chuck Schumer with the political cover necessary for enacting socialism while posing as a defender of liberty. Schumer applauded the decimation of state sodomy laws, not because he’s a man who believes in liberty, but because he correctly knew that repeal of those laws would lead to bigger government in the long run. He might have walked over to Hillary with a smirk on his face and said, “Those libertarian shmucks helped us again...now, let’s intruduce that new law to make it a federal crime to refuse to rent an apartment to a man who wears women’s clothes, lipstick, and nail polish.”
When we unleash destructive behavior such as homosexuality, abortion, and the like, we unleash a lot of destructive people and impulses which ultimately boomerang. These are not good citizens who are concerned with the common good or future generations, or for that matter, liberty. They’re concerned with hedonism and self-indulgence, and will immediately demand government benefits, special laws to promote their lifestyle and stifle their ideological enemies, and the hijacking of public institutions for the promotion of their behavior. Leftism and socialism then fills the void. Societies like this also lose the will to fight. People might risk death to protect property, faith, family, or cherished traditions, but who would die to protect a homosexual bathhouse or an abortion mill?
Libertarians fret that the Christian right is like the Taliban. Actually, conservative Christianity may be the only thing with the power to stop the Taliban. Libertine, secularized, socialist Europe surely won’t.
Terms like "conservative" and "liberal" are politically relative. Terms like "libertarian" and "socialist" are absolutes. To the degree that our founding principles are libertarian, libertarianism is conservative.
You may indeed see pro-military sentiment in Massachusetts. Do you think it’s coming from the lefties in Cambridge or from the people who engineered same sex “marriage” in your state?
Last time I checked, Massachusetts had two leftist anti-military senators, one of whom has a plaque honoring him in the Communist museum in Ho Chi Minh City for his anti-American conduct and fraudulent testimony. Last time I checked, the entire state House delegation was composed of anti-military leftist, socialist Democrats such as Barney Frank and John Olver.
There are still patriots in Massachusetts and they no doubt honor our troops with banners and support, but they’re sure as hell outvoted.
I expect that all those pro-troops banners were hoisted by the same type of people who tried valiantly to block the homosexual agenda in Massachusetts. Do you think the gay “marriage” and “abortion rights” crowd made those banners?
Give me an example of a libertarian nation.
You're assuming, as an outsider, that the lefties in Cambridge are representative of our entire state. They're not. As are those who care about same sex marriage, they are a vocal minority that currently has the ear of our political machine here in Massachusetts. Make no mistake: the Democrat party here in Massachusetts is an old-fashioned political machine. I have no doubt that if the people were allowed to vote on homosexual marriage, they would have voted it down---that's why we were prevented from doing so by The Machine. They knew they'd lose, so they used the machinations of politics to block the vote.
I agree. The bottom line in our current situation, as always in cultural matters, is cultural marxism. Libertinage rather than liberty, followed by social chaos, and then a crackdown with the totalitarian left in control. Responsible liberty and a careful attention to what rights are fundamental and what rights are not rights at all, but base desires, is the only possible way to protect freedom. Libertarians of a certain stripe fear any ideology that asserts a right to limit action outside of the individual conscience. Libertarian meet anarchist. Anarchist meet Libertarian. That anarchism was and is a variant and tool of the hard left escapes most libertarians.
Where libertarian and conservative can work together is in limiting Federal power and supporting politicians that wish to do so.
You don’t think that you are the only Republican voter that wants a Republican party that is committed to limited government. You are bitter that the big government conservatives have taken over again after Goldwater and Reagan. I bet most people on Free Republic are, including me.
And good luck in 2008 to you as well!
The converse is true as well.
Weren't you one of the few freepers who supported this guy's election a few years back?
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