Posted on 08/01/2013 9:28:50 AM PDT by Responsibility2nd
Way back in 1975, a Republican agitator named Ronald Reagan had this to say about an esoteric young movement that was roiling politics: “If you analyze it, I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism.”
Neither the GOP old guard nor the rowdy libertarians ever quite bought that argument.
They both lay claim to the same conservative economic philosophy. But libertarians are more isolationist and antiwar than Republican orthodoxy allows on foreign policy and more permissive on social issues.
Still, in the nearly four decades since Reagan made those comments, the two have managed — at least most of the time — to maintain an uneasy marriage of expedience.
Libertarianism once again appears to be on the rise, particularly among the young. But its alliance with the Republican establishment is fraying, as demonstrated by the increasingly personal war of words between two leading potential 2016 presidential contenders.
The sparring began last week, when New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) posited: “As a former prosecutor who was appointed by President George W. Bush on Sept. 10, 2001, I just want us to be really cautious, because this strain of libertarianism that’s going through both parties right now and making big headlines, I think, is a very dangerous thought.”
After Christie made it clear that he was referring to Rand Paul, the Senate’s leading critic of the National Security Agency and its surveillance programs, the Kentucky Republican fired back on his Twitter account: “Christie worries about the dangers of freedom. I worry about the danger of losing that freedom. Spying without warrants is unconstitutional.”
Their feud — which is being watched closely as a possible warmup round for 2016 — has continued, expanded and spilled over into other issues.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
The Continental congress had to make law regarding what is a legitimate marriage, just as the government always does.
The first law regarding widow benefits at the federal level was in 1780. Naturally they had to have a definition of what they considered a legal marriage, and two men were not going to pass muster.
Yet Goldwater was in favor of it. Your claim is that anyone who says (as Goldwater did) that "You don't have to be straight to be in the military - you just have to shoot straight" is a liberal.
I can source this if you want. You've been calling me such for quoting Goldwater this entire thread. Ergo, you think Goldwater is a liberal because he said just that.
Don't deny it! Admit it!
sorry, i’m just getting back to this thread. as you say, for me what you term “social” conservatism is just conservatism. it is the conservatism of most of the founders (really arguably all of them including franklin, jefferson and odd balls like paine).
for me, a belief in God as soverign (ala the founders) defines the extreme “right-wing” or conservatism. everyone else, from my point of view as a believer—including your “neo-cons” or “libertarians” are just varing degrees to the left of true conservatism.
in otherwords, my political theory uses the dimension of belief in God (rightmost) to non-belief in God (athiesm) leftmost.
That’s more than a bit of a stretch. Sounds more like a pension law. Quote the part where they defined a legitimate marriage. I’m betting that it isn’t defined in the legislation because there was no reason to at the time.
Are you drunk now? Your posts are getting stranger and flakier.
Not in the slightest.
Do you think Barry Goldwater was a liberal? Your posts say "Yes I do". Its a simple yes or no question. Let's have the answer ...
It isn’t a stretch at all, it is federally legislated and issued, widow benefits, do you think that they had to know what they accepted as a legal marriage for that marriage based benefit?
just to give a concrete example: so when someone talks about government as God (big government) and no government at all (like an extreme libertarian) to me they are just two sides of the same coin; they are both rejections of God. they are grabbing power from God.
no worries about us establishing a police state though—true Christians are usually in such a small and hated minority that they are the ones who get fed to the lions first.
I don’t mean to butt in, but that’s an interesting approach, and it’s not terribly different from my own in some ways, though I might reach some different conclusions. A question: what do you see as the state’s role as it relates to your belief in God? The reason I ask is that I see the growth of the state happening at the same time as the degradation of our culture, and I can’t help but think the two are related. As we drift from God as a society, does government fill the void, or did government growth have a role in causing the drift in the first place? Probably too late at night to be pondering such.
The first I can see as straightforward: statism being idolatry of the state... but the second? How is saying Government has extreme limits
a rejection of God?
(Yes, a rejection of God could manifest in a rejection of all authority; but rejecting much of government-claimed authority as being illegitimate doesn't necessarily follow.)
Promote your homosexual agenda on your own, you don’t need Goldwater to promote abortion and the homosexual agenda.
Today, are you supporting the libertarian view on abortion and homosexuality, or not?
Did they accept common law marriage? I’d still like to read the part of the legislation where they defined marriage. Common law marriage is a pretty interesting topic, and it would be fun to read up on how it related to this act of the CC. It wasn’t allowed in Britain, but was in some colonies. You seem up to speed on this, so either provide a link or a cut and paste of the law.
don’t mind at all. politics is so hard, but the founders were good teachers.
yes, of course, i agree that the two are related based on my (perhaps oversimplified) view. you see the evidence before us. the mechanisms (causation outside of the first cause: abandonment of God) are pretty murky.
but it’s clear to me that our system of government was engineered/designed up as a system of checks and balances with all parties having the moral fortitude to play *only* their roles. when more than one branch immorally starts to conspire with another, which many of the founders knew had to happen eventually, the experiment would have to fail. franklin and others predicted it.
thus what do we as Christians do given this apparent inevitablity. what action would God want us to take now that we are here at the end of the line. that’s the question i now struggle with.
You're dodging the question again.
Do you think Goldwater was a liberal or not? Yes or no. Its not difficult and I'm not asking for sourcing. I'm asking a yes or no question.
Which is it? Was Goldwater a liberal or not? Yes or no?
yes. well i have to answer that there is government under God as we were founded. the limits of that government are good.
there is government that is outside of God. man’s government. the government of principalities, of powers, of the wicked in high places. so is the libertarian of whatever stripe governing under God or not? clearly some who call themselves that here are to some degree. that’s good. that’s why we can find common ground.
complete indifference to all around you, complete indifference to your “competitors.” is that government God would approve of?
certainly if you as an individual affected no one outside yourself, you could at least argue you are doing no harm. but is that just another utopian cannard?
I know that today only 9 states allow common law marriage, but that all 50 states recognize it if it complied with the laws of the state it was acquired in, as do the feds.
Colonial marriage law was largely English common law with variations.
The thing about the history of marriage that surprises some people, at least until they think about it for a moment, is that their was just about always a common authorized marriage definition in place.
People can remember reading about Greece, and Rome, and Indian tribes, and peoples from around the world, and recall that they all had marriage laws, that some form of shared authority decided on the validity of the relationship and the termination of it and disposition of wealth and property, even laws like “the first born son shall” etc.
The republican party was partly founded to fight marriage issues among the Mormons and Apache.
LOL, gee you want to talk about Goldwater, and I’m not interested.
Promote your homosexual agenda on your own, you don’t need Goldwater to promote abortion and the homosexual agenda.
Was Barry Goldwater a liberal or not?
This is not difficult. Yes or no?
Doing no harm is not enough, for if you know to do good and don't do it you are sinning just as much as if you chose to do evil. So, IMO, there's really no fence-sitting when it comes to morality.
complete indifference to all around you, complete indifference to your “competitors.” is that government God would approve of?
See my tagline, it's from Micah 6:8.
yes. well i have to answer that there is government under God as we were founded. the limits of that government are good.
there is government that is outside of God. man’s government. the government of principalities, of powers, of the wicked in high places. so is the libertarian of whatever stripe governing under God or not? clearly some who call themselves that here are to some degree. that’s good. that’s why we can find common ground.
I think you and I are in complete agreement here.
I’m struggling with that question too. Personally, I think that the growth of the state was mostly well-intentioned in the beginning. The Progressive Movement had plenty of Christians aboard, and they did mean to do good via government power. Though divorced from God (there are exceptions) modern liberals at least say they intend the same. They didn’t originally mean to drive God from our society, but that’s what happened. It just seems like the power corrupts the effort and the people making it.
The Founders certainly knew to be suspicious of centralized power, and what they wrought worked really well for a long time. Even they said it would only work for a moral people. We don’t have that anymore, and so we have a government that actually subsidizes immorality; it’s not even morally neutral. We pay girls to have babies out of wedlock, for instance, and do everything possible to keep people from having to live with the consequences of their actions. I have a hard time putting much faith in an institution that’s $17 trillion in debt, but can’t cut the cowboy poetry subsidy from its budget, or in a people that would elect a fraud like Obama. It seems like virtually everything has been rendered unto Caesar, so what’s left for God?
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