[rebelsoldier]

You can't "opt out" even if you wanted to. Oh if we could. The Confederacy tried such a political experiment, assuming that civilized nations could go their separate ways in peacefully. There was no hope from the start because nations and governments do not simply relinquish or lose great power voluntarily. Such as it is with political power. This is why I said that what many Libertarians and others want can only be achieved by non-political means, especially if such changes are to occur in one's lifetime. About Libertarians by demanding government do certain things it now doesn't do: for example, if you want to drastically alter legal, religious, cultural, and traditional practices to legalize homosexual marriages, which is not now legal or generally supported, you must empower government with the ability to ignore all these concerns and impose a new order and definition for what constitutes marriage.

That's government's heavy hand in service to a specific political agenda, not validating the overwhelming will of the populace. The same could be said with lealizing hard drug and narcotic use legalizing prostitution. These involve more than just run-of-the-mill arbitrary policy choices, but part of the fabric of the culture as it exists in relation to religious beliefs, traditions, cumulative history, and even human biology. You can't just delineate all collective human experience into an arbitrary political arrangement and an undifferentiated mass of humanity in a vacuum. That is the chief problem with hypothetically "perfect" political systems as well as others such as language wherein the "perfect" international languages dsigned by lingusitic "experts" ie: Esperanto, Monoglottica,, and Interlingua, to mention a few fail. They lack an active base of popular support and fail to address the human culture to which they were to be applied. This is why communism, although once widespread through force, failed to gain loyalty and longevity.

[pghliberty]

re opting out, that was my point.

Re government still being involved after being removed, I don't understand your point. What you are stating is a contradiction. e.g. libertarians want to remove government from these items and are therefore forcing government into the mix. This makes no sense.

By removing government from the drug war, for example, are you suggesting that government then promotes drugs?? That’s not the case. Private individuals and institutions would carry on the fight much more effectively and much less collateral damage. As for marriage, where does the government need to be involved other than enforcing contracts between individuals who freely agree to associate? Marriage is between individuals and their god, and its nobody else’s business.

AS for the overwhelming will of the populace, we are not a democracy that relies on the will of the mob, but rather we are (supposed to be) a republic that protects the rights and freedoms of individuals. You seem to think the will of the masses makes right. But that’s the same problem you complain about. This is where so many go wrong – they think “if only my party in all its nobility had the power”… whereas libertarians promote eliminating said collectivized power and handing it back to individuals.