In the past few years, the most vigorous defense of pornography, drug use, and allowing sleaze on the airwaves has come from Libertarians. Not even Democrats in the 1970's heyday would defend these things as much now. Libertarians also seem to have a much higher level of atheism and hostility to faith in their ranks than they once did.
Libertarianism ain't what it used to be.
Libertarianism was based on the assumption that the individual could be responsible for himself. That he had the discipline and self restraint to rule himself.
NOW days what Libertarians want is to be free of ANY restraint of any kind. That is not liberty, that is license.
bump
conservatives should stop when every liberal is long gone. Until then, it ain’t over.
They also, like Moslems, hate women.
Conservatives should embrace the values of limited government. This should include limiting the intrusion of government into personal behavior, which is to say the libertarian value.
If progress is to be made in the moral sphere, it will be made through persuasion and development of morals-friendly social institutions, such as churches or groups of concerned citizens. But the first impulse of these institutions must not be to legislate morality, because then we are right back where we started.
It seems puzzling to me that conservatives rightly believe that government cannot achieve anything in the commercial sector and have a healthy skepticism about the power of regulation, but somehow suppose the government will be effective in legislating morality.
This is just something the government is not very good at. If we fight on this battlefield, we will lose, over and over again. I suspect the people who want to fight these fights just want to build electoral coalitions. But that is not a sufficient reason.
Ummm.....
This thread should get interesting ...
PING!!!
whatta bout contemporary racism by minorities
towards whites?
in socal everyday in public you can wait longer in line than the spanish-speaking,
or be dissed as a clerk in the local drugstore for not speaking spanish.
Wrong. It's 'conservatism' that's been bastardized completely beyond recognition by the Republican Party. The new unofficial credo of the Pubs is now "Us too, just not so fast!"
Real conservatives and real libertarians should be natural allies. The damned shame of it is that there are no more than half a dozen real conservatives left in the National GOP, and not one of them is in a leadership position.
Hypocrisy, thy name is GOP.
L
I see it also. Thanks for posting this article.
I’ve read post years back by some boasting of voting Democrat or against the Republican who had a chance to win out over the Democrat.
I think Libertarians from my readings of them at times have displayed a level of anarchism in their views.
I sure can’t believe the group that posts here like a pot worshiping drug cult as one-note Johnnys.
I have gone to read what stupidity DU folks write for a half hour about twice a year and there is a duplicate pot/drug worshiping one-note Johnny crowd there that repeats verbatim what some of our zealous drug promoting folks do.
I don’t know, I for one can see electing a Libertarian dog catcher, but I kind of at this point consider them more anarchist who are a bit radical from what I have read.
You can take things too far and I consider Libertarians at times as being extreme.
Just think of their past open border stances, drug stances, nearly NO government and basically no war stances that have been posted here.
Yeah, war isn’t pretty. War isn’t wanted or cherished as a goal, but sometimes various generations are required to put it out there for the sake of future generations and the right to continue to post on wonderful forums such as Free Republic.
Just my opinion, nothing set in stone here, I always read and may change my opinion somewhat later.
I am a registered to vote as a Conservative. I would be a registered Constitutionalist if New York State ‘recognized’ them. A party has to garner a certain percentage of votes to be officially recognized.
Actually I think the breakdown is because it never truly was a ‘natural’ alliance. It was more a convenience.
BTW, this is my first post. I just signed on today. I am just finishing Richard Poe’s “Hillary’s Secret War” and was inspired to come here. I also post at another Conservative forum.
Nice to meet you. : )
While I agree that many libertarians don't care about anything other than smoking pot, what exactly have conservatives accomplished?
Behavioral consequences are largely theoretical to a person who has thus far been spared the necessity of having to deal with them. It is only with the cumulative experience of maintaining mature relationships, employment, raising children, and managing a household budget that the big light bulb tends to go on, illuminating truths hidden to many, if not most younger people.
What a moronic lumping. I consider myself to be ‘libertarian’, but I harbor no such dellusion that the culture war is over. There’s far too many suspects for the label ‘useful idiot’ for me to believe that.
The thing about libertarians is that many, if not most of them, go, or at least like to think they are going to go or have gone, through a (generally fairly brief) rather libertine phase where they experiment with behaviors that appall most (and especially religious) conservatives. Most libertarians, having tried it on a bit, settle into personal social conservative values, but they remain deeply attached to the notion that they have the right to be libertine if they so choose. It matters to them, but they regard their very freedom to choose how to behave as the bedrock of individual freedom.
In fact, many social conservatives, in their collegiate youth, experiment with licentious behavior as well, before they return to behavior consistent with their social conservative views. The difference is that social conservatives don't like to think about it or celebrate it publicly (just with their frat or sorority cronies?). For them, the conservative values are what pulled them away from their youthful libertinism, and they fear the absence of the social conventions will lead to a breakdown of society. Hence they are uncomfortable with the libertarian strain that emphasizes personal choice.
The ones to worry about are the liberals, who flout convention for the sheer fun of it and fall into a sort of Peter Pan-like stasis where they never grow out of behaving like a kid who wants his own way and won't deal with anything rationally.
There's a natural alliance between libertarians and political conservatives. There will be a natural alliance between them and the social conservatives as long as the latter remain political conservatives. When they turn to political opportunism and try to turn the federal government to the task of social engineering in pursuit of their own brand of "social justice" they part company.
And I would argue it's not only the libertarians that have changed. Sure there are some more liberal leaning libertarians but social conservatives did not always embrace the Progressive movement of the early 20th century. I am libertarian and I am socially conservative. However, unlike Progressives (Republican social conservatives), not all morality should be legislated at the national level.
Sure social conservatives will give excuses but if we were to embrace the policy that one size fits all across the nation, you further destroy federalism, the rights of the separate and sovereign states, and rather much most intents of the state legislatures. Yes, you'll start with abortion, marriage, etc. But give it a generation of that thinking and we'll have national smoking laws. Think I'm joking? 35 years ago who would have even suggested abortion was a national issue? Or marriage, unions, whatever you want to call it?