Libertarianism would work in a world where everyone is born 30 years old with the life experience of decision making of that age. But we start out as children in a cultural toilet made more sullied buy the “libertine”.
I was searching for a way to put my thoughts into words and then you posted exactly what I was thinking. Thank you.
If the problem is that too many people are “libertine”, then we have a problem that is entirely outside of the role of government to address.
You will recall that the federal constitution was not written to control citizens, it was written with the presumption that the citizen has liberty and that government must be restrained. To that end, citizens delegated some power to government. But where government exactly lacks the power is in telling a citizen what he can and cannot do in the privacy of his own home and with his own person.
Moreover, if the problem we have is that too many people are libertine with respect to how the treat themselves, they will certain be libertine in how they vote and how they treat their fellow man. Libertine people will not be restrained in what they allow government to do, as long as government doesn’t touch the most important aspects of their lives, like how much they support same sex marriage, or how much they want to punish the rich with property confiscation.
The only way to roll back a libertine mindset is through massive public support of a philosophy of personal responsibility and personal development. I am willing to put up with more pot heads if it means that those pot heads cannot vote to give government more power over us.
We have a libertine population in part because we have given government the job of educating our youth. When government cannot have a spiritual basis for its laws and regulations because the First Amendment forbids it, then government schools will be devoid of spiritual values as well, especially since educators are overwhelmingly hostile to Christian values.
It took well over a century and a half to get here and it will take many decades to dig ourselves out. One place to start is to get government out of the education business and give parents vouchers to enable their children to be educated where parents see fit. Notice the rise in homeschooling and in private schools. Notice that homeschooled children are far more conservative than their public schooled peers.