[Usagi_yo]

The anti-war movement was actually co-opted by the Democrats

Reagan gave us one of the most vilest things this country has, but I forgive him because he did it in all earnest. Every law the government makes gets corrupted as time goes by.

Asset forfeiture.

[Blueflag]

I am not a capital “L” libertarian because the party tends to run nut cases for candidates.

I see myself as a Constitutional ‘originalist,’ a social and economic libertarian, capitalist, pragmatist, and anti-federalist in the 1787 way, and a moral conservative Christian.

In other words, the modern Tea Party. ;-)

[Drango]

Losertarians a just strange.

[Extremely Extreme Extremist]

Nice broad brush you got there.

How many Republicans actually stand for the beliefs that they're supposed to be standing for?

There are pro-life, pro-national security, pro-border security, and pro-traditional values libertarians; just as there are pro-abortion, pro-interventionist, pro-homosexual, and pro-open border Republicans.

I am a proud conservative-libertarian, and yes, the two ideologies go hand-in-hand and compliment each other.

[Moonman62]

Libertarians are anarchists who own property.

[mlo]

You believe in freedom as a principle, a fundamental human right, or you don’t. If you believe in it only for people that do what you approve of, you don’t really believe in it.

[DiogenesLamp]

Libertarian economic theory can be traced back to Adam Smith. Conservative Social theory traces back to Edmund Burke.

What many people do not know is that Adam Smith and Edmund Burke were good personal friends, and their theories were intended to work together, not be regarded as two separate and mutually exclusive ideas.

No economic system will function without strong moral underpinnings to protect it.

Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites, — in proportion as their love to justice is above their rapacity, — in proportion as their soundness and sobriety of understanding is above their vanity and presumption, — in proportion as they are more disposed to listen to the counsels of the wise and good, in preference to the flattery of knaves. Society cannot exist, unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere; and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.

Edmund Burke 1791

Morality is necessary to the function of civil society. You can't have a financially free, but morally corrupt society. It will collapse.

[coloradan]

Arming Syrian rebels and supporting the Egyptian Arab Spring protestors and walking guns to know Mexican drug lords isn’t “not getting involved” as you falsely claim.

[Baynative]

"If you were against the war, you were a Democrat and for the war, a Republican."

I am amused at the irony of the people in the streets who wanted less government becoming democrats.

[DManA]

You don’t know what a libertarian is you fool.

[narses]

+

Freep-mail me to get on or off my pro-life and Catholic List:

Add me / Remove me

Please ping me to note-worthy Pro-Life or Catholic threads, or other threads of general interest.

[Nifster]

Nicely said

[Tau Food]

Nowadays, nearly everyone I know is pro-government (when it comes to benefits they receive) and anti-tax (when it comes to taxes that they have to pay). Politicians have learned to promise that they will protect your benefits and that you won't have to pay for it.

Now, lately it has become fashionable to promise to reduce government spending. So, the trick is to promise to reduce government spending in as general a way as possible without ever being specific enough to make any voter feel that his benefits are threatened because, again, the vast majority of voters do not want to cut any of the programs that benefit them or programs that they like.

There aren't many low-income food stamp mothers who want to cut food stamps. There aren't many unemployed folks who want to cut unemployment benefits. There aren't many Tea Party seniors who want to cut senior benefits.

People are people and politicians are politicians. It's no mystery why we are where we are.

[Talisker]

The problem is corporate status.

The government uses the 14th Amendment to invoke, and then presume, corporate status on the People.

What this doors is reverse the relationship of the People and the government. Under the original Constitution, the government was derived from the People, the People had rights outside government reach, and the government was limited by nature.

But incorporation flips this relationship, because the government is the “creator” of the corporation. So regarding corporations, the government has unlimited power, and corporations have limited privileges granted by the government, and existing at the pleasure of the government.

So you see, all of the excesses of the government at every level - federal, state, county and city - come from incorporation. So the mechanisms by which the incorporation of human beings is presumed is THE root issue, the enabling concept of tyranny by definition, because it has no limits by definition.

Unfortunately however, this mechanism is hidden in plain sight through its very commonality. Everyone thinks they know what incorporation is, but few really do. The ultimate irony is that we have not lost a single right - they just aren’t being used anymore. So it’s really not a master of rebellion, because we already have the goal. We’re just not using it.

[RaceBannon]

very good sir !
True liberty is not license.

[two134711]

Just lurking as usual and have a few observations:

Despite some valid points made by both sides of this debate, it's really only one side that has devolved to truly vicious name-calling:

"Fool" (posted by one individual 7 times or more)
"Sod off, troll" (posted in variants at least 5 times)
"What a child you are."
"Apparently you're an idiot..."
"Shove it out your ass."

And on the other side: "Losertarians."

I admit to having some "libertarian" leanings, but since "libertarians" feel so strongly about what that word means depending on who is being addressed, I prefer saying "as an American, I have right to not be regulated into slavery."

We can debate federalism all day long, but if the federal government does not adhere to this part of the Constitution:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

...Then libertarians (big L or small l) are not being wholly truthful. Drugs, like alcohol and tobacco sales, can be a matter relegated to the states, but the truly serious life and death issues, like federal border security, abortion and marriage are matters that the federal government can and MUST have a hand in.

Read that again where the Preamble states that We the People of the United States MUST "secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity."

For goodness' sake, the Republican Party was founded in part to demolish polygamy and slavery and secure those God-given Blessings(not government given)! And I would posit that counterfeit marriage and government-sanctioned murder of pre-born children are certainly worse that polygamy and slavery.

If a libertarian feels so strongly that the federal government should have no say in these issues and just pass them off to individual states, then they are not adhering to the history of the National Republican Party. Then again, the Republican Party is not adhering to its own history.

The GOP is fragmented and dying, and this libertarian-conservative debate just underscores that.