Posted on 05/01/2002 9:09:03 PM PDT by Pokey78
Edited on 04/23/2004 12:04:26 AM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
Sept. 11 might have also brought down a political movement.
The great free-market revolution that began with the coming to power of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan at the close of the 1970s has finally reached its Thermidor, or point of reversal. Like the French Revolution, it derived its energy from a simple idea of liberty, to wit, that the modern welfare state had grown too large, and that individuals were excessively regulated. The truth of this idea was vindicated by the sudden and unexpected collapse of Communism in 1989, as well as by the performance of the American and British economies in the 1990s.
(Excerpt) Read more at opinionjournal.com ...
The 1st amendment prohibits Congress from expending money for the advancement of religious dogma. Advancing religious dogma is the equivelent of establishing a state-sanctioned religion.
Even if the Constitution did not forbid Congress from expending money for that purpose it would still be immoral just as it is immoral for Congress to redistribute wealth. Forcing others to finance the advancement of ideas which they do not share is immoral, unethical, and criminal.
Tell us, exactly what advancement of religious dogma are you referring to? Congress has made no law respecting an establishment of any religion.
Those demanding prayer-time, Bible-study clubs, and religious decorations on the walls of government buildings are supporters of taxpayers financed advancement of religious dogma. Such activities and accoutrements have nothing at all to do with the functionality of those government facilities. They serve only to coerce people into participation and observance of religious activities or imagery for the gratification of religious fanatics.
Nevermind the ethical implications of forcing people to finance public education. You might as well force people to finance public grocery stores.
The federal government, has every right to secure, protect and defend American interests around the world.
The purpose of the federal government is to defend America and not what Reagan Man considers to be of interest. Foreign invenstors alone bear the risk and responsibility of protecting their interests over seas. If I decide to open a manufacturing plant in the Middle-East I am not morally entitled to a portion of your income to hire security guards to defend my plant.
Limited government is a good old fashioned conservative-republican idea. Free market capitalism is also a good solid fiscal policy. In those areas, most libertarians seem to agree with the conservative-republican agenda.
Yet, the Republican party puts candidates in office who vote for agriculture subsidies, housing subsidies, cumbersome and burdensome regulations, anti-trust laws, inflationary monetary policies, taxpayer financed campaigns, research grants, block grants, student loans, government-created monopolies like the Post Office and Federal Reserve, regulates the size of toilets, etc.
Individual rights and property rights are the backbone of libertarian policy, but they have little to do with, recognition of and respect for community efforts, as in houses of worship, local school and local taxpayer funded police and fire departments.
Libertarians recognize the difference between wishes and rights -- a concept which you have failed to grasp. You have no more a right to a taxpayer financed education than you have a right to band-aids from your neighbor's medicine cabinet.
Protection of people and property is a legitimate function of government. Government represents the collective right of individuals to defend themselves and their property. Fire and police protection would fall into that purview. Although, they should be privatized through competitive bidding and restricted to only those activities which include protecting people and property. For example, you would not be able to call the police to arrest your neighbor across the street because he refused to subsidize your retirement.
For mankind to grow and prosper, it takes a lot more then just individual freedom. It takes a conscious effort by everyone.
Contrary to what Hillary Clinton says, no, it does not take a village for people to prosper and grow. Nor does it take a committee of central planners or a mastermind. You remind of a story I once read.
A traveler arrived one day in the midst of a tribe of savages, where a child had just been born. A crowd of soothsayers, magicians, and quacks -- armed with rings, hooks, and cords -- surrounded it. One said: "This child will never smell the perfume of a peace-pipe unless I stretch his nostrils." Another said: "He will never be able to hear unless I draw his ear-lobes down to his shoulders." A third said: "He will never see the sunshine unless I slant his eyes." Another said: "He will never stand upright unless I bend his legs." A fifth said: "He will never learn to think unless I flatten his skull."
"Stop," cried the traveler. "What God does is well done. Do not claim to know more than He. God has given organs to this frail creature; let them develop and grow strong by exercise, use, experience, and liberty."
In other words, tend to your own failings and shortcomings and quit presuming to tell others how to live. People will do foolish things and make mistakes. Unless they harm others they should be left alone to deal with the consequences.
Libertarians would be very happy with no government, at all!
I'd like to think that one day humanity will outgrow the need for government. But, as long as there are people like yourself with no moral constraints about using violence to get your way, we will need government.
A libertarian world, is a world of chaos and anarchy. I say, no thanks.
What we have now is a world of chaos and anarchy as a result of hundreds of millions of people trying to run the lives of everyone else. Hundreds of millions of people who believe that violence is an acceptable means of problem solving. Hundreds of millions of people who believe they are morally justified in using violece against others because their god says it's ok. Hundreds of millions of people who do not respect individual rights or property rights. The progeny of savages and barbarians. I say no thanks.
It has gotten late. Good night .
The principle of repetetive lying making something true is dear to your heart, eh, Reagan Man? Let us try some logic to cool the flames of your raving.
1. It is not possible to be anti-government while at the same time supporting the Constitution. You misuse of the term suggests to me that you interpret strict adherence to the Constitution as 'anti-government'. Why would that be, I wonder? Perhaps it is because you would like to govern in a manner contrary to that permitted by the Constitution, and are therefore incensed at those who would stand in its defense?
2. I served my term in the military, and am a better man for it. In fact, I advocate mandatory military service of at least two years after graduation from high school. There is nothing like walking the steel decks of ships of war, or carrying arms in the service of one's country, that makes it quite so clear in a man's mind just how fragile is our liberty, and just what we pay to preserve it. I do not believe it is possible for our citizens to properly do their duty and vote to direct the future and the security of this nation without clear understanding of the forces they direct by so doing.
I swore as an oath of my service to defend the Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic. It seems obvious that you and most of those who agree with your drivel have not, or that you have abandoned that oath.
3. Christ stood against a mob of men who had it in their mind to stone an adulteress. If Libertarians opposing the use of force against personal vices strikes you as anti-religion, one wonders what religion you follow. Certainly, you do not follow His example.
4. Communities are as varied as men themselves. I would stand against a community of robbers. I would stand with a community of honest men. Your 'anti-community' accusation is meaningless wordplay.
5. See above.
Don't you libertarian pinheads get it, yet?! How do you expect mankind to exist in a world fill with so many anti-human values and beliefs.
You have failed to even note any anti-human values above, you have merely asserted them, and each has been shown to you to be patently absurd. Worse, you sound like a Communist, with your whining about human values. It's the same sort of rationalization they use for their libertinistic debauchery.
What makes human beings so unique and special among all of Gods creatures, is not just our abilities to think and create, but also our ability to adapt to change. It's what has defined mankind through the millennia.
Sheer stupidity. Even the simplest of creatures, viruses, adapt to change! What makes man unique is his _singular_ capacity amongst God's creations to know right from wrong, to empathise with his fellow man. We alone are capable of _forbearance_ of force in appreciation of the God given right of others to liberty and self determination, even when we are offended or disgusted. A beast cannot appreciate this; only a man can do so, and clearly, not all men do. Here you are, full of righteous indignation, prepared to strike at your neighbor not for causing you harm, but simply because you are offended by his actions. Is that what passes for Christianity these days? Where in the scriptures did Christ do the same? As I recall, he did it only once, with the moneylenders, and he was terribly ashamed.
I should think one who is so quick to show his piety, wit, and religious fervor would have considered this.
Most libertarian's believe that individualism, is all mankind needs to grow and propser.
Rather, libertarians believe liberty is a necessary but not sufficient ingredient for prosperity and growth. Men cannot grow morally if they are compelled to morality. As has often been noted, character is what one does when no one is looking.
What utter foolish nonsense. In my book, that makes you libertarians nothing but selfish, godless heathens.
In my book, your refusal to appreciate the rights of others to live contrary to your own personal view is evil. I am tempted to call you and those who agree with you subhuman, to suggest that perhaps you lack the capacity to make such moral distinctions, but that would be far too lenient. All men are born with conscience; it is the spark of God within us. You do not lack it; you simply turn away from it because it is simpler to behave as a beast, embracing the herd mentality and law of the jungle, afraid to stand up for what you know is right for fear of the reaction of the pack. You are selfish, self-righteous, cowardly, beastial, and brutal. You turn away the soft voice of God in your conscience for the louder baying of your fellow wolves. It makes you safe, and puts you closer what you truly crave, power over your fellow man, the ability to force him to live as you would have him live. These are not the motivations of a Godly man. They are the motivations of a fallen soul, the trading of what is right for what is convenient for you. That makes you evil. You simply are not what you claim to be, none of you.
Man is a social creature. Libertarians want everyone to live in a social bubble.
If God had intended man to function as a collective, without individals making their own decisions on morality, he could have easily created men to be such. He chose not to do so. Care to explain the mind of God for us, Reagan Man? Surely, you, or some of your compatriots, are wise enough to explain his reasons. I, however, do not deign to know his intent.
As long as you libertarians can smoke your pot, have your pornography and prostitutes, you're all fat, dumb and happy.
That is correct. As long as we _can_. We need not do so; we need only the liberty to do so, if we choose. Men without choices cannot practice morality; they can only do what they are permitted. Again, I note that you seem limited in some capacity, that you cannot distinguish the difference between the two, and yet, I know that you are not limited. You _choose_ blindness, as did Saul. He spent the rest of his life making up for that. One wonders when the scales will fall from the eyes of you and your ilk.
Well, most people disagree with your politics and denounce your anti-human proclivities.
(shrug) Then we are in good company. Or do you not recall that Pilate tried to release Christ by presenting the populace the choice of Christ or Barrabbas, a murderer, to go free? He stacked the deck, thinking that surely, the crowd would see reason. And yet they screamed for Christ's blood, because they had also been stacked with fanatics. Christ was, to them, an agent provokateur, a man who tolerated whores, thieves, and gamblers in his presense, defended adulteresses, and worst of all, he dared challenge the theocracy that had abandoned the laws of God in favor of the power and prestige their positions brought.
Your kind, who go about blaring how pious you are, disgust me. You do not follow Christ, you follow men. A pious man leads by example, not by the sword, and helps those who are ready to receive his aid, without forcing them. A good man does not seek to steal the freedom that God has given his fellow man, save to defend himself.
You seem like Cain to me, ready and willing to wield a club against your brother simply because you are angered by things that have no bearing on your own choices. It's one of the earliest lessons in the Bible. I don't understand how you could have forgotten it.
Thraka
Do you really believe this?
Look at the direction the gopers are going. Would you characterize the leadership in washington as more conservative or less conservative?
And? Every species on earth attempts to improve the genetics of its descendants - you can do it haphazardly or you can do it deliberately.
As long as it's your religious activity, you mean. I doubt you want to government to fund, say, the Nation of Islam's religious activities.
There's several areas I think government should survive - pollution control, crime & justice, defense, and perhaps money. The original Constitution is a good start.
In a choice between Republicans and Democrats -- I vote Republican. If we instead had a choice between Republicans and Libetarians - I'd vote Libetarian. A choice between Libetarians and Objectivists? Objectivists. Or better yet, Constitutionalists (get rid of the democracy we have now and get back to representative government)
Instead of banning handguns, ban government (ala the founding fathers). Governments have killed far more and we citizens keep ceding power to them. Stupid, isn't it. There ought to be a law!
I think you're referring to libeltarianism, with which you are no doubt intimately acquainted.
Contrast that with the Republican party, full of raving lunatics, demanding the use of threats and violence against those who oppose the collective. Religious fanatics who demand taxpayer financed education, prayer, Bible study clubs, and religious accoutrements on government buildings. A party of sellouts who pander to special interest groups in exchange for campaign contributions and power. The ethics of a neanderthal."
Well said. How can a Conservative be a Republican anymore?
Hehehe - maybe I'll start a Bill Bennett thread or one about the new drug/terror ads. They usually come crawling out of the woodwork then.
But hey, don't take it personally. I didn't say all L's were dopers or even most, just a significant number.
But almost all of them are doper-enablers.
That's okay. They, with their liberal friends, own the media, the public fora, and popular culture. Why they would even want to waste time in a little place like FR when the whole world belongs to them is a mystery for the ages anyway.
This ad hominem argument is even worse than the article.
You wouldn't know an ad hominem argument if it jumped out of a gutter and bit you square on the butt.
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