[New Orleans Slim]

"True moral-liberals looking for true conservatives."

Yeah, whatever. Most small 'l' libertarians such as myself who usually to vote Republican (I live in Manhattan, so I often have the luxury of a protest vote), think government should stay the hell out of the morals business. And out of the business business. Nothing turns me off more than a Republican telling me how to live my life - that's the job of Democrats and other lefties.

True conservatism is about getting the government off our backs and keeping it off. I trust the marketplace. And that includes morality. People need to learn to be moral by acting moral - and not depending on the government to enforce morality. And if you can't convince people to adopt your morality without using the government to shove it down my throat, then suck it up. In that case you lost in the marketplace of ideas, and it is not the job of the government to prop up marketplace losers. That, my friend, is called communism.

[RockinRight]

Alright. Works for me.

[Cultural Jihad]

Democracy only works when its members are moral, responsible, self-governing people. The huge social problems we are facing today is a result of moral-liberalism. For centuries we had no problems with the political will of the people of a state saying that evil behaviors have evil repercussions and are intolerable. If you want to call the Founding Fathers 'communists' then go for it.

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"We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate for the government of any other." -John Adams, Oct. 11, 1798 Address to the military

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"A general dissolution of the principles and manners will more surely overthrow the liberties of America than the whole force of the common enemy.... While the people are virtuous they cannot be subdued; but once they lose their virtue, they will be ready to surrender their liberties to the first external or internal invader.... If virtue and knowledge are diffused among the people, they will never be enslaved. This will be their great security." -Samuel Adams

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"[N]either the wisest constitution nor the wisest laws will secure the liberty and happiness of a people whose manners are universally corrupt. He therefore is the truest friend of the liberty of his country who tries most to promote its virtue, and who, so far as his power and influence extend, will not suffer a man to be chosen onto any office of power and trust who is not a wise and virtuous man." -Samuel Adams

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"Those people who will not be governed by God will be ruled by tyrants." -William Penn

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"Bad men cannot make good citizens. It is when a people forget God that tyrants forge their chains. A vitiated state of morals, a corrupted public conscience, is incompatible with freedom. No free government, or the blessings of liberty, can be preserved to any people but by a firm adherence to justice, moderation, temperance, frugality, and virtue; and by a frequent recurrence to fundamental principles." -Patrick Henry

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The moral-liberal libertarians toy with the idea of making personal corruption some sort of human right only at the expense of liberty, since a corrupt people will never install virtuous leaders.

[Always Right]

True conservatism is about getting the government off our backs and keeping it off. I trust the marketplace. And that includes morality. People need to learn to be moral by acting moral - and not depending on the government to enforce morality. And if you can't convince people to adopt your morality without using the government to shove it down my throat, then suck it up. In that case you lost in the marketplace of ideas, and it is not the job of the government to prop up marketplace losers. That, my friend, is called communism.

I really don't think any pure ideology works. America's system is all about the market place of ideas. The moralless anarchy that Libertarians propose has never worked and I have no doubt it never will. You can work within the best system ever created to advance individual rights and reduction of government, or you can keep taughting ideas that will keep Libertarians on the 1% fringe.