This Is A Normal Brain
This Is A Brain On Dope
Posted on 06/17/2013 7:18:47 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
More people value individual liberty, but we might be losing the moral guardrails.
Are Americans becoming more libertarian on cultural issues? I see evidence that they are, in poll findings and election results on three unrelated issues: marijuana legalization, same-sex marriage, and gun rights.
Start with pot. Last November voters in the states of Colorado and Washington voted to legalize marijuana, by a margin of 55 to 45 percent in Colorado (more than Barack Obama’s margin in the state) and by 56 to 44 percent in Washington. In contrast, in 2010, California voters rejected legalization 53 to 47 percent. These results and poll data suggest a general movement toward legal marijuana.
State legislatures in Denver and Olympia have been grappling with regulatory legislation amid uncertainty over whether federal laws — and federal-law enforcers — override their state laws. But marijuana has already become effectively legal in many of the states that have reduced penalties for possession of small amounts or have legalized medical marijuana. You can easily find addresses and phone numbers of dispensaries on the Web.
Same-sex marriage, rejected in statewide votes between 1998 and 2008 and most recently in North Carolina in May 2012, was approved by voters in Maine and Maryland in November 2012, and voters then rejected a ban on it in Minnesota. Since then, legislators in Delaware, Minnesota, and Rhode Island have voted to legalize same-sex marriage. A dozen states and the District of Columbia now have similar laws that would have been unthinkable two decades ago. I have yet to see signs of political backlash. Polls show that support for same-sex marriage is well nigh universal among young Americans, but it has also been rising among their elders.
To some it may seem odd to yoke marijuana and gay rights, generally thought of as causes of the Left, with gun rights, supported more by the political Right. Yet in all three cases, Americans have been moving toward greater liberty for the individual.
One landmark was the first law, passed in Florida in 1987, allowing ordinary citizens to carry concealed weapons. Many, including me, thought that the result would be frequent shootouts in the streets. That hasn’t happened. Almost all ordinary citizens, we’ve learned, handle guns with appropriate restraint, as they do with the other potentially deadly weapon that people encounter every day, the automobile. Concealed-carry laws have spread to 40 states, with few ill effects. Politicians who opposed them initially, such as former Michigan governor Jennifer Granholm, have not sought their repeal.
In contrast, voters have reacted negatively to gun-control proposals, even after horrific events like the Newtown massacre. That was apparent in the Senate’s rejection of the Toomey-Manchin gun-registration bill.
What about the cultural issue that most pundits mention first, abortion? Attitudes have remained roughly the same: Most Americans think abortion should be, in Bill Clinton’s phrase, safe, legal, and rare. Young Americans, despite their libertarian leanings on same-sex marriage, are slightly less in favor of abortion rights than their elders are. They’ve seen sonograms, and all of them by definition owe their existence to a decision not to abort. And from the point of view of the unborn child, abortion is the opposite of liberating.
Back in the conformist America of the 1950s — a nation of greater income equality and stronger labor unions, as liberals like to point out — marijuana, homosexual acts, and abortion weren’t political issues. They were crimes. And opposition to gun-control measures in the 1950s and 1960s was much less widespread and vigorous than it is today.
Is this libertarian trend a good thing for the nation? Your answer will depend on your values.
I’m inclined to look favorably on it. I think the large majority of Americans can use marijuana and guns responsibly. Same-sex marriage can be seen as liberating, but it also includes an element of restraint. Abortions in fact have become more rare over a generation.
But I do see something to worry about. In his bestseller Coming Apart, my American Enterprise Institute colleague Charles Murray shows that college-educated Americans have handled no-fault divorce and other liberating trends of the 1970s with self-restraint.
But at the bottom of the social scale, we have seen an unraveling, with out-of-wedlock births, continuing joblessness, lack of social connectedness, and less civic involvement.
In conformist America, the old prohibitions provided these people with guardrails, as the Wall Street Journal’s Daniel Henninger has written. In today’s more libertarian America, the guardrails may be gone.
— Michael Barone, senior political analyst for the Washington Examiner, is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a Fox News Channel contributor, and a co-author of The Almanac of American Politics.
I am trending toward libertarian because I believe we can never shake the liberal control of government at all levels. It seems government just naturally fills itself with liberals.
Oddly enough, to me, the best way for a conservative society is to leave people alone, because people are naturally conservative.
I trend toward Libertarian as well. I think it most accurately embodies the small government, non-intrusive structure that our republic was founded on. We cannot rightfully tell people what is right and wrong and not expect that they reciprocate when the time comes.
I find it impossible to separate Conservatism from Libertarianism, although a lot of people’s views of the latter are misguided and or uninformed.
Clinton got some “father of the year” award... Politics is performance art.
I agree with libertarians on the idea of leaving other people alone, but what they don’t get is that there is a set of people who have no qualms about the reverse.
Your toilet tank is too big. We need another turtle tunnel. Solar power requires investment. Chinese prostitutes need training. These barbarians need help against those heathens. You shouldn't smoke a joint on your couch. The Grand Canyon is showing signs of erosion. We have to spend money to keep from going bankrupt. Shrimp on treadmills. Etc ad nauseum.
Republicans want bigger government. Democrats want the same.
I'm tired of holding a gun to my neighbor's head.
Too bad we are not trending libertarian on issues such as the size of government, fiscal policy, spending, taxation, and following the US Constitution.
BTW-— I am NOT a libertarian. I am a Constitutionalist. I believe the federal government should limit its activities to those outlined in the Constitution. If we did that we wouldn’t be bankrupt.
As I understand it, a libertarian would say that a child has a right to the support of his natural father and mother, because they are the ones responsible for his existence--- right? They understand that children normally, and by right, derive their personal identity, their place in a kinship system, and their support and upbringing from their parents, unless something goes seriously amiss.
Another way of saying it is that libertarians would understand that normal parental obligation is not a violation of liberty, but an obligation arising from the parents' own actions.
If this is the case, how can they justify same-sex marriage, which is the foundation of a "family unit" in which any child would deliberately --- with intent and forethought --- be deprived of either his natural mother, or his natural father, or both?
Does this make sense?
Let me go just one step further and explain why this is not like, say, normal adoption.
In normal adoption, there's a problematic situation, a de-facto existing circumstance which everyone recognizes as unfortunate or tragic. A child has lost his parents through death or abandonment, or was placed for adoption because his parents are unwilling or unable to care for him. There is a recognized hurt (that's why a child being "orphaned" is regarded as a real loss.)
And it is a hurt, a loss, that was not produced, or willed, by the adoptive parents. They didn't kill or drive away or intentionally alienate his natural parents. They simply stepped into an already-existing sad situation to supply the child's needs: his need for a mom and a dad.
The gay family-building project is entirely different. It is predicated (most often) on bringing a child into existence intentionally cut off from one of both of his natural parents --- either by vendor insemination, or IVF, surrogate (reproductive concubine), or some other artificial reproduction technology. AND/OR, the child is being brought into a household where he will never, and CAN never, have his need met for a mom and a dad.
This is an intended brokenness. This is not an adaptive response to meet a child's need: the child's loss of one or both natural parents is a feature of the system.
Does anybody see that? From the point of view of a child who needs, and has a right to, a mother and a father, how can this be right?
I don’t disagree with any of your concerns.
I think, however, that the giant, remote, behemoth in Washington, unanswerable to the population is the cause of such absurdities in the USA, much like the giant, remote, behemoth king in London was unanswerable to the colonies.
Strip the behemouth of its power, and the local representatives, directly answerable to the local people, without the protection of the distant federal government, will resolve those issues.
Again, government fills itself with social liberals.
Why these RINO idiots can't get it through their heads that catering to them means adopting the rest of the RAT platform I'll never know.
Bingo!
I don’t know or care what is on the Libertarian platform -— that political party reflect traditional Liberalism as much as Barny Fag represents Judaism.
But whatever it takes to gut the centralized power so conservatives can be conservatives without government interference is fine with me.
“am NOT a libertarian. I am a Constitutionalist. I believe the federal government should limit its activities to those outlined in the Constitution. If we did that we wouldn’t be bankrupt.”
That’s probably a better way to discribe the concept.
Back in the day when political theory was taught, this was called “Classic Liberalism.”
But it doesn't do anything to gut centralized power or big government. It just removes the morals our nation was founded on.
You are a fool if you do not see it.
No, I think morals are taught in shuls, churches, and by parents and very locally-controlled schools.
That role was never governmental.
Anything from the top-down fails.
When the "tea party movement" started it was exclusively about cutting the waste and bureaucracy out of the government. People were angry their taxes were going up and the government was squandering the money. That attracted people from all over the political spectrum and it was a winning issue. Very libertarian.
Unfortunately those who control the political discourse in our country (from both sides) immediately began driving social issue spikes into it and now the tea party is just seen as social conservative right wingers.
Please forgive me if I read that wrong but the way it is worded it looks like you are saying that the morals our nation was founded on come from the central government.
This Is A Normal Brain
Our government was founded on morals and our laws based on them. The morals don’t come from government, but government used to defend your right to live a moral life. That is what the RATS are changing.
Government now wants to use the force of government to make you accept a society without morals.
Your taxes have to support abortion and the queer agenda. Your children have to accept it as normal in school.
This isn’t about leaving anyone alone, the agenda is to force you to accept it!
They destroy the family to grow government.
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