Posted on 06/11/2014 6:23:54 AM PDT by Kaslin
Both libertarians and conservatives want to keep America safe. We differ on how best to do that. Most libertarians believe our attempts to create or support democracy around the world have made us new enemies, and done harm as well as good. We want less military spending.
Some conservatives respond to that by calling us isolationists, but we're not. I want to participate in the world; I just don't want to run it. I'm glad Americans trade with other countries -- trade both goods and people. It's great we sell foreigners our music, movies, ideas, etc. And through dealing with them, we also learn from what they do best.
On my TV show this week, former U.S. ambassador to the U.N. John Bolton will tell me why my libertarian skepticism about the importance of a "strong military presence" is "completely irrelevant to foreign policy decision-making."
Bolton thinks it's dangerous and provocative for America to appear militarily weak. He supported the Iraq War and says that if Iran were close to getting nuclear weapons, the U.S should attack. "I will go to my grave trying to prevent every new country we can find from getting nuclear weapons," because if they do, "it's going to be a very dangerous world."
He criticizes Presidents Barack Obama's and George W. Bush's failed attempts at negotiation with Iran, "negotiation based on the delusion from the get-go that Iran was ever serious about potentially giving up its nuclear weapon program."
That kind of talk makes Bolton sound like a hard-headed realist. Who wants to be naive like Bush or Obama? But hawks like Bolton ignore parts of reality, too.
They are quick and correct to point out the danger of Iran going nuclear. They are not as quick to talk about the fact that Iran has a population three times the size of Iraq's -- and the Iraq War wasn't as smooth or short as then-Vice President Dick Cheney and others assured us it would be.
If it's realistic to acknowledge that America has dangerous enemies, it's also realistic to acknowledge that going to war is not always worth the loss of money and lives, and that it makes new enemies. War, like most government plans, tends not to work out as well as planners hoped.
I asked Bolton if he thought the Vietnam War was a good intervention. "Obviously, the way it played out, it was not," he said, but, "it's always easy after the fact to second-guess."
Bolton also acknowledges that the Iraq War did not go well, but then adds, "Where mistakes were made was after the military campaign." The U.S. was unprepared for the civil war that broke out. The U.S. also failed to turn utilities and other state-run companies in Iraq over to the private sector, maintaining poorly run monopolies on energy production and other essential services, often squandering billions of dollars.
It might be seen as a harsh lesson in the importance of planning for the aftermath of toppling a bad regime. But we libertarians wonder: Why assume government will do better next time?
Occasionally government acknowledges mistakes in domestic policy -- but that doesn't mean it then becomes more efficient. It usually just spends more to try, and fail, to fix the problem. It's the nature of government. Politicians don't face the competitive incentives that force other people to make hard decisions.
Candidate Obama garnered support by criticizing Bush for costing money and lives through a protracted stay in Iraq. But that didn't stop Obama from putting more money and troops into Afghanistan.
In his first term alone, Obama spent about three times as much in Afghanistan as Bush did in two terms. Did we win hearts and minds? I don't think so. The Taliban may still retake the country.
Our military should be used for defense, not to police the world.
Abortion is a fundamental position for libertarianism, just as being pro-life is for conservatives.
Pro-life libertarians are a minority, and they support and promote an ism that is pro-abortion, the old Ted Kennedy position of being "personally pro-life" but supporting and promoting the democrat party.
At least one place needs to be sorted out: that prison where our Marine is being held. Citizens need to...self censored.
Currently we spend 40 cents of every military dollar spent on earth. We out spend our nearest rival 4 times.
How much is enough? 5% of our GDP? 10%?
If you want my head to explode say “what ever it takes”.
Hey Bulwyf, how do, brother?
I’m ALL for hitting the bad guys on THEIR turf, rather than waiting for them to hit Main Street USA...
It’s never a bad thing to recognize a real, lethal threat and neutralize it - forcefully, if all other methods fail.
Neutralizing Adolf Hitler in the 30s would have spared a lot of horror and death. A 20 cent bullet from an M1903A3 (or a Kar98K Mauser) could have stopped WWII before it got started.
This one dimensional number line metaphor does nothing but cloud thinking. It is a crutch so people don’t hurt their brains thinking too hard.
“Another key issue is that libertarians want the security-industrial complex to be reined in and made to obey the Constitution, while too many conservatives are willing to allow the Fourth Amendment to become collateral damage in the latest war (whichever one it is at the moment).”
Actually that is a weak straw man issue.
Rand Paul claims to be pro-life, but he isn’t officially a libertarian. He’s hard to figure out.
I have heard of quasi-choice libertarians.
I’ve heard of rape/incest/life of mother ‘pro-life’ libertarians.
Mostly, though, and exactly as you say, libertarians are pro-abortion.
HOW can they possibly object to any homicide if they don’t object to every homicide?
Bolton was right. But Stossel wants to second guess the Iraq conflict? And claim that libs were right on their being against it?
He's an idiot. And he's one of the better libs.
-— HOW can they possibly object to any homicide if they don’t object to every homicide? -—
Because personally, most are libertines. I used to hang out with Party members when I went through a libertarian phase in my younger days.
“I’d like to have a conference with the Putin and tell him he can have the Ukraine, but now he needs to settle down”
Neville, you tried that in the 1930s...It didn’t work. See Sudetenland, Czech, Poland, Norway etc.
You see, I agree with me, and you, but I don’t want this regime to do anything at all about Russia. I don’t want Fedzilla to do anything at all. I want them to cease to exist because they’re evil. Their trajectory will make them increasingly worse. Where I differ from Libertarians is they want all their anarchy protected by this evil government. Yes they do. Leaving Fedzilla alive, while legalizing heroine, will make this country so horrible that we’ll pray the mountains will fall on us.
There is no libertarian who truly believes in freedom who also supports killing babies. It is a non-sequitur.
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Are you outta your mind? There are TONS of libs who support abortion. Even here at Free Republic.
Are you on some Zot pinglists by The Old Lady and others? You should be. You’ll see JR zot the pro-abort liberaltarians around here on a regular basis.
Libertarians take to heart the reality/experience of Prohibition.
Younger days....Are you an official OG, STAquinas? :>)
Yes, I’m outta my mind. Next question. lol
Actually, I have run across pro-life libertarians. My sense is that there are very few open pro-abortionists on FR.
There still would have been war in Europe, except it would have been with Russia. As it turned out, the Nazis took that bullet for us, not a bad outcome.
We are still using the WWII model. Afghanistan is not Germany or Japan, it’s a backwater hell-hole, and always has been. Iraq is no better. Guilt makes us stay around to try to save them from themselves.
Be that as it may, and considering the very title of this thread 'Libertarians vs. Conservatives'; we see one thing very clear:
You can either be a lib or a conservative. But you can't be both. And for the many many libertarians who infest Free Republic claiming to be conservative; they just lie.
I see it as two dimensional, with traditional Lib vs Conservative on the X axis, but Statist/Libertarian on the Y.
That would place Randian Objectivists in the upper right quadrant, Hippie Libertarians in the upper left, Communists in the lower left quadrant and Fascists in the lower right.
One benefit of this construct is that when Libs trot out the claim that Obamacare is a center-right, market-based solution, you can easily back them into an admission that it’s Fascist economics...
Libertarians are lefties, it is why they can’t be conservatives.
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