Posted on 02/24/2010 3:24:36 AM PST by Scanian
The day before last week end's Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, a group of prominent conservatives gathered a few miles away at the Virginia estate of our first president. Their Mount Vernon Statement swears fealty to a "constitutional conservatism" that "applies the principle of limited government based on the rule of law to every proposal" and "honors the central place of individual liberty in American politics and life." If only they meant it.
Constitutional conservatism certainly sounds better than "compassionate conservatism," which turned out to be code for big-government conservatism. And it is easy to hope that the thread of a properly limited federal government could bind the strands of a movement that has been unraveling since the end of the Cold War.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
“Careful. We might turn you into a “l”ibertarian yet.”
Small “l” maybe.
Antoninus: I oppose. The majority may rule, but they are often wrong. Not to mention stupid. This is why the Founding Fathers loathed direct democracy.
I'm not sure exactly what you oppose. Do you think CA should have the constitutional authority under the Tenth Amendment to implement such a program, or do you support federal law enforcement shutting down the program?
I am what you would consider a small “l” libertarian.....c’mon, join the dark side..... :)
Although all libertarians (and virtually all conservatives) want economic freedom and capitalism, lifestyle libertarians reject laws limiting abortion, drugs, and extreme pornography and isolationist libertarians want to withdraw from the world and shrink the military to a border constabulary force. I have seem bitter arguments among libertarians on those issues.
Ultimately, Christianity is philosophically libertarian in that it advocates traditional morality and insists that we possess free will and are responsible for our conduct. By the late 19th and early 20th Century, standard Christian teaching in England and the US advocated both economic freedom and laws supporting traditional morality.
Nor should it be thought that libertarian license for drugs, abortion, and extreme pornography somehow must lead to support for economic and political freedoms. The reverse is often true. Like many of today's liberals, that species of socialists known as Communist advocated abortion on demand and rejected traditional morality as bourgeois. In a similar foreshadowing of today's Democratic party leadership, the Comintern had so many homosexuals that it was wryly referred to by many communists as "the Homintern."
What conservative support? Every time someone even tries to roll back government, RINO harpies come screeching in with various strawmen and worn out platitudes.
As an Agnostic/Heathen pro-life Marine, I don't really fit into your neat little box you've so carefully crafted. Most people won't.
That's kind of the point. No matter how you draw up a law under our Constitution, if it isn't expressly listed... it's forbidden for government.
Period. End of story.
Unless you want to Amend the Constitution with another Convention. Care to wager what today's crop of liberals would do with THAT much power?
You are on the mark. Among friends from high school and college and in my extended family, marriage and children often led to traditional conservative views and voting Republican. I have also noticed that discussion of children and traditional moral issues tends to bring out a latent conservatism in ordinary Black people. Blue collar Black men are often much like Archie Bunker in their views on life and morality. I find myself in good company when among them.
“c’mon, join the dark side”
I don’t believe that many of your contemporaries would like to have a person whose religious views form his political views amongst them.
The New Deal cases relied on case law precedents that expanded the federal commerce clause after the Civil War. For the most part, this expansion of federal power was to aid the growth of industry and commerce and protect them against state and local impediments. Read the case law.
How do you reconcile private property rights which are the foundation of all of our rights and advocating government intervention into what one can consume and not consume on private property? How do you reconcile private property rights and our right to be free from harassing search and seizure of homes, cars and money?
If our private property rights have been traded for security, we have no rights.
Again, who gets to define morality if the Christians are no longer the majority and do you want that morality enforced by law?
One of your other points. How long will China buy our debt so we can maintain a military presence in 130 different countries?
You paint with a broad brush regarding libertarians. I don’t consider myself a libertarian although there are many of their beliefs that I agree with.
Today's Leviathan FedGov proves this out quite clearly.
“What conservative support? Every time someone even tries to roll back government, RINO harpies”
Um....methinks you are equating “Republican” with “Conservative.”
There’s a difference.
Yes. There is.
Something to keep in mind if we were to decide to stop p*ssing away money on incarcerating citizens for victimless crimes.
Private businesses retain the right to have drug free employees. They are free to set any standard they want for the employees they hire. (Except for the already passed anti-discrimination policies that are unconstitutional)
I would not be upset if there was a law passed requiring a drug test to receive government assistance. Here you are talking about public money involved, same principle applies to public roads. Same applies for government employees especially where they are involved in operating a vehicle on public roads, transporting passengers in any way.
We are not talking about establishing a right to take drugs.
If your stupid and want to get high, your employment prospects will be limited to employers that don’t have high standards.
How else do you explain private property being seized for private gain, or "shall not be infringed" being bloody well infringed on a dozen fronts?
I am not really libertairan....I am a conservative with libertarian leanings...there is a place for religion in politics, and my religious beliefs form my political views (belive it or not)...I am really strugging to understand why the viciousness against libertarian viewpoints. Yeah, some just want everything legalized, and some are nutcases (take ron paul).. but overall both believe in smaller government, less government interference in our lives, and fewer legal means for government to be able to interfere in our lives. We both want the power returned to the states (repealing the 17th amendment would go a long way to doing this)....I hold the libertarians as brothers in arms so to speak, yet here we are, with an election of major implications right around the corner, and certain elements are trying to alienate a rather large voting block from the conservative movement. It gets me to thinging that maybe this is how clinton is spending his cash.....
You make too much sense to fit what I have come to understand to be a libertarian.
I've been thinking this all week. The knobs are all turned up to 11.
Our freedoms will not survive if we are not a predominately Christian nation. De-Christianized Europe is demonstrating this proposition as it relinquishes its freedoms under pressure from Islam.
China buys our debt so as to keep their currency low relative to the dollar and thereby spur exports to the US and economies tied to the dollar. Otherwise, China's economy would stall and the regime would suffer dangerous internal pressures.
The US position in the world is an artifact of history. With the end of the Cold War, the US became dominant in all pertinent dimensions of power: military, economic, technological, cultural, and political.
In an era of Islamic terrorism and ready access to nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons, a chaotic world would endanger our access to raw materials and markets and could quickly deliver massive destruction to our shores. For our sake, we must keep the seas and commerce open and trouble either suppressed, in check, or at a safe distance. There is a measured case for less active military effort as a matter of strategy, but there is not a good case today for isolationism.
Your claim of a US military presence in 130 countries is deceptive. In most instances, the presence is not a major base, but logistic or listening posts and military aid or sales programs and military liaison offices. We do these things because they are in our interest not because of some vain love of "empire" as it is the fashion to claim.
Our economy benefits from a substantial military engaged in the world because it makes us and our economy and investments more secure. The danger to our economy comes from excessive federal regulation, taxes, and spending. Our entitlement spending cannot be sustained due to the generational deficit and massive and growing debts.
Stare decisis is a necessary principle and is of lesser force in constitutional cases. The real problem is not stare decisis but the lack of enough votes on the Supreme Court to overturn bad precedents.
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