Libertarian ping.To be added or removed from my ping list freepmail me or post a message here
Posted on 07/25/2005 6:41:05 AM PDT by Theodore R.
Should Your Personal Life Be An Affair Of State?
Should your personal life be an affair of state? That's what divides libertarians and true conservatives from the modern Jacobins who falsely wear the label of "liberal" or "moderate."
The libertarian/true-conservative position is that your private and personal affairs are not the business of the state as long as you refrain from applying force or fraud against your fellow citizens. The Jacobin position is that your life belongs to the state and your personal interests may be sacrificed for the common good, which, of course, the Jacobins will define.
The most recent example was the Supreme Court decision that the state may take your property not for any traditional public purpose, such as a school or road, but simply because the politicians want to hand it over to developers who will put more expensive buildings on it. The fact that a family may have worked a lifetime to acquire their home or small business, faithfully paid their taxes and obeyed the laws means nothing. To the Jacobin, the end always justifies the means.
Jefferson Davis, one of America's greatest statesmen, said after the Northern victory that a question settled by force will always arise again in another form and in another time. He was right. The same division that was present at the Constitutional Convention, that was argued almost continuously during the early days of the republic and that led to war between the North and South remains with us yet.
That question is, Do you want a strong central government or a weak central government acting as an agent for sovereign states with clearly defined and limited powers? The North stood for the central government, the South for the confederation. Unfortunately the manpower and industrial might decided the issue in favor of a centralized government. Just as several Confederate leaders predicted, this quickly evolved into empire and imperial wars.
The next war was indeed a war for empire — the Spanish-American War — and was immediately followed by another war that put the lie to the claim of liberating people from Spain. That war was the Philippine Insurrection, in which we crushed those who wanted true independence. It was, by the way, far bloodier than the war against a very weak Spain. Every war since has been a clash of empires, including World War II.
What Americans need to realize is that it is impossible to increase government power without decreasing individual liberty. Government power, after all, means coercing people into doing some things and into refraining from doing other things. Every law says to the citizen, "You must" or "You shall not." Thus, liberty is lost incrementally, law by law by law. Dictatorships do not arise from dictators' telling people what terrible things they plan to do; all dictatorial power is built on a promise of good things — safety, security, prosperity.
Power rests either with the people or with the government; it cannot reside in both at the same time. Power is like electricity and is never still. It is always flowing in one direction or the other. Power is more seductive and addictive than cocaine. These are basic principles based on human nature and are as true today as they were in classical Rome.
As a true conservative with a strong libertarian streak, I fear government more than terrorists and criminals. Random acts by random individuals with no army and no air force can be dealt with much more easily than actions by a government backed up by military and police power. In recent years, federal law enforcement has expanded to the point where there is now an equivalent of five military divisions armed and invested with the power to make arrests.
The problem with freedom is that it is a two-sided coin. On one side is the liberty to make decisions; on the other is responsibility. I pray we have not reached the point where more Americans fear responsibility than love liberty. As many have said before, those willing to sacrifice freedom for security will end up with neither.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- © 2005 by King Features Syndicate, Inc.
bump
"Should your personal life be an affair of state?"
Ask Ms Lewinsky
The price we paid for that weakness will last generations.
Your personal life should become an affair of state when your personal life endangers others.
But the article is actually about central versus decentralized government. I lean more toward decentralized, but I have no illusions that somehow state level governments cannot themselves abuse their power.
If power were to lean in their direction, they, too, would become corrupt over time. Ohio's governor, Bob Taft, is a current, prime example.
Most of the states I have lived in have had viciously corrupt governments. Maybe even worse in some ways than the feds. They know people better, and where their "enemies" live. The local gov't controls the agencies that affect peoples' immediate lives - cops, local courts, schools, etc.
But - there's more of a chance of change at the local level, especially if the fed money is removed. Local control will only happen when it's all local money.
Since he has purported to enlist Jefferson Davis and the Confederates to his discredited cause of paleopantywaistism, I suspect he is suggesting that men like Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson who served with distinction in the Mexican War were also on the side of paleopantywaistism when they stood with their state against the Union? I don't think so.
Let's see:
1) Despises all things military;
2) Resists war of any sort but particularly against the enemies of the USA;
3) Hallucinates that leaving Islamofascisti unopposed to consolidate their control over Islam will be better in the long run for the US;
4) Knee jerks uncontrollably at every opportunity to bash Bush or common sense or both;
5) Whines, moans and groans with as much skill and experience as any Senate Demonrat;
6) Will always blame America first, last and always.
7) Apparently regards murder by abortion and "gay" "marriage" as human "rights."
8) Hallucinates explicitly that WWII was a war for empire, ignoring small matters such as Pearl Harbor. EVEN THE AMERICA FIRST COMMITTEE folded its tent in the face of Pearl Harbor and Charles Lindbergh finally fought as an aviator after being made to spend three years begging FDR for the opportunity of proving that he was ready to be a patriot. We can know that Reese is not a Demonrat because???????
Libertarian ping.To be added or removed from my ping list freepmail me or post a message here
Did Bubba ever submit to blackmail while in office?
Just another reason why character counts.
I think that both paleo as well as neo-cons are not conservative. That said, I understand that you have major issues with Reese's foreign policy stands, but do you disagree with this particular article?
The difference between corrupt, authoritarian state governments and a corrupt, authoritarian federal government, is that if your state government is corrupt and authoritarian, you can still move. If the federal government is leviathan or decides your rights are only so broad, where do you go?
Moon colony alpha or Mars colony Beta.
Other possibilities are the Alaskan or Canadian far north or the Australian outback.
P. J. O'Rourke - 1980's
There are three kinds of "conservatives."
NeoConservatives, accurately speaking, a group of octogenarian and nonogenarian ex-Socialists and LBJ aides and worse who saw the light as the McGovernite communists seized a once respectable political party in the attempt of the McGovernites to geld America. Many are dead now. The rest will probably go all too soon. Not conservative across the board but good enough in our times.
Paleoconservatives, just as eager as the McGovernote communists to geld America while making believe that the discredited "blood and soil" embarassments of the 1930s, accompanied by ostrichlike heads buried in the sand until the bad people go away, posing for holy pictures with the constitution that they misunderstand, coupled with a few green-eye-shaded sleeve-gartered money obsessives clipping coupons in the back room at the bank on Main Street constitute a political movement much less a conservative one.
Actual conservatives (really the only genuine kind) who believe in aggressive military policy, interventionist foreign policy, economic policy of Adam Smith, that patriotism and skin color are not the same thing, that belief in God, heaven, hell, reward and punishment, sin and virtue, have very good consequences in any society, that, in war, there is no substitute for victory as MacArthur observed. See the 1960s-1970s New Right exemplified by Young Americans for Freedom and also see the Sharon Statement of 9/11/60 largely written by Stan Evans as YAF's founding statement. Yaf.org or yaf.com.
Reese claims libertarianism as "the true conservatism." It is not. I may have to do this in pieces since I cannot easily access the article without losing my writing.
Military action against our enemies IS responsibility and it is the responsibility that underlies our freedoms. Paleos, including Reese, need to lead, follow or, much more likely, sit down and shut up and stop undermining our nation. I want a government STRONG enough to conquer our nation's foreign enemies (enemies not immigrants) and punish domestic criminals who threaten our lives, liberty and/or property. I want a government WEAK enough to be effectively unable to impose socialist schemes upon our people and to thwart state efforts to do so. The actual wording of the constitution is a good guideline and we ought to live up to the Declaration of Independence while we are at it.
If killing your unborn children or your disabled spouse by dehydration is considered part of your "personal life," give me some federal authority to thwart either. Likewise, passing HIV/AIDS by pseudosexual practices involving the nether end of the digestive system ought be prohibited by government. If government cannot prevent such assaultive behavior, it ought to strip willing participants of civil rights as necessary to protect public health and, if we could quarantine TB and/or leprosy patients, we ought to quarantine HIV/AIDS patients. Federales can act if states don't.
The Spanish-American War was NOT an imperialist war. Emilio Aguinaldo got what he deserved. So did the Huks in the late 1940s.
Kelo vs. New London is an evil decision and, when you factor in Connecticut's practice of having the plaintiff's attorney paid out of the eminent domain judgment as a 33 1/3% contingency fee, the losing homeowners were doubly raped (by their local government by the way since the homeowners took the matter to the SCOTUS after losing in the Judicial District Court at New London and the Appellate Court of Connecticut (?) and finally at the Connecticut State Supreme Court (once more accurately called the Connecticut Supreme Court of Errors).
I favor the Confederacy without reservation in the late unpleasantness known as the Second Great War of Rebellion or the War Between the States. I favor so-called "red states" over so-called "blue states." Slavery was unjust and an evil and tacky and ought to have been abolished at the outset but would have died of its own weight and inefficiency as Andrew Jackson predicted to Sam Houston on Jackson's last night in the White House. (See Texas history text Lone Star).
I am not a big fan of government but I am afraid we are living in an era when I do prefer some enhanced state security over incidents causing innocent folks to have their arms and legs flying disembodied through the air because the Islamofascisti are in a snit over whatever.
I think that covers the waterfront. Any other questions?
....Because, generally speaking, Libertarians have no particular patriotism.
This is perfectly well-reflected in their economics: Me Me Me Me, screw You You You You.
Libertarianism, rightly understood, is actually a "watchmaker God" theo/philosophy--but its adherents are mostly agnostic or atheist.
That should be enough reasons.
So Libertarianism isn't for grown ups? What would you consider a state like Nevada then? Sodom and Gomorrah?
Additional Point: What is so wrong with wanting a weak and ineffectual government? Weak governments generally don't pry into your business and don't tax you excessively.
What ever happened to "you mind your business and I will mind mine?"
The Libertarian/SoCon rift will tear the Republicans apart mark my words...... After all Fascists and Communists both had the same goals but just came from opposite directions.
All too often libertarianism places a thin veneer of pseudorespectability over the real nature of tolerating the intolerable. Libertarians often support the mass murder of innocent babies by abortion. If libertarians thought so much of libertarianism as a creed, they might respect it more by avoiding such juvenile ideas as "Do what thou wilt!" coupled with the laudable prohibition of the initiation of force and the similar prohibition of fraud as the nearly whole creed of their secular faith.
Just because La Rand patted poor serially cuckolded Frank O'Connor on the head on her way to and from her trysts with J. Random Other Adulterer(s) did not make her gross misbehavior acceptable in polite society nor her screeds against morality. Some of us will also not soon her endorsement of Gerald Ford against Ronald Reagan in the Ayn Rand Letter in 1976 because Reagan was pro-life as Ford was not. Therefore, libertarianism as normally practiced isn't for grownups.
If your business is killing innocent babies (near 50 million to date by surgical means alone), then you need your business pried into and shut down and you need to be punished. That is what happened to: "You mind your business and I will mind mine."
I rather doubt that either I or ninenot or any of the others I have pinged desire overtaxation or anything more than minimalist taxation.
If Libertarians simply cannot abide the protection of innocent human lives, then why would any genuine conservative want anything to do with allying with Libertarians. Libertarian, Nazi or Communist, I take a dim view of the slaughter of millions of utterly innocent humans and I have no desire for alliance with those who insist that I accept abortion as a condition of alliance.
You grossly overestimate "libertarian" influence in the GOP on such issues. In 1976 and then in 1980, this was hashed out in the GOP primaries. Ford won in 1976 as Goldwater literally warned Repubican not to let Reagan's finger near the nuclear trigger. The lifestyle leftists such as Ford, his wife Betty and the "Goldwater" Republicans were routed in 1980 and have not been spotted significantly since. Goldwater himself promised to be pro-life if he was returned to the Senate against a pro-life Democrat and then stabbed pro-lifers in the back by continuing to vote pro-abort. His first wife Peggy was a Planned Barrenhood director nationally from bout 1940 until her death in 1975 or thereabouts. Goldwater, late in life, also bragged about taking his daughter for one or more abortions and ezxpressed support for the homosexual lifestyles of multiple descendants.
Check the GOP National Platforms of the last thirty or so years and you will see the rout of the lifetsyle leftists on abortion, homosexuality and other issues. The tail has not wagged and will not wag the GOP dog. For every social left defection to the Party of the Arkansas Antichrist and of Mrs. Antichrist or half-defection to the LP, there will be multiple defections of poor but socially conservative Democrats to the GOP.
On some very important issues, Nazis, Communists and other pro-aborts have held the same goals from whatever direction.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.