[savagesusie]

I find most Libertarians state ALL the time that “social” issues aren’t important-—just the economics, stupid!

Libertarians seem to think that you can divorce the “social” issues from economics. You simply can’t. All economics are based on human interactions which are always social.

That is why the Founders stated-—Without Virtue, you can not have Freedom. I will expand on that thought-—without virtue, there is no trust and without trust you can’t have a vibrant economic system. Like my Nigerian professor told me—in his country, which was pathetic—you had to bribe everyone for everything, etc. There was no virtue. Why? They had no moral absolutes like America (Christianity) is based on....they had arbitrary laws which were always unjust and favored friends, relatives, etc. They had no true concept of “Justice” which goes back to Plato and Cicero put into Roman Law. His idea became America’s idea—which stated that there is a higher law—God’s Law—where the standard of Justice is set.

Without Rule of Law, you can’t have Justice and a vibrant economic system. All human behavior determines what a society is like. Christian Ethics have proven the best for a vibrant economy. Perfect? No. But only because the Christians failed at acting like true Christians. It worked as perfect as any system with human beings could work.

Note, this was what Rand said in the above letter: “...where his economics came to touch upon moral issues (as all economics must)....” If you take out morality/amorality/immorality-—you take out humans. Only humans can create economic systems. That was Rand’s point-—that Libertarians tend to think you can have an economics system in a vacuum. It is another utopian idea.

[Amberdawn]

That’s exactly my argument against her. A Libertarian site I frequent has far too many members who trash religion regularly. When I made the comment that they should at least be grateful for the independent discipline that religion teaches to people, some went bats*** crazy. They don’t seem to understand that less religion = more goverment.

[James C. Bennett]

"Like my Nigerian professor told me—in his country, which was pathetic—you had to bribe everyone for everything, etc. There was no virtue. Why? They had no moral absolutes like America (Christianity) is based on....they had arbitrary laws which were always unjust and favored friends, relatives, etc. They had no true concept of “Justice” which goes back to Plato and Cicero put into Roman Law. His idea became America’s idea—which stated that there is a higher law—God’s Law—where the standard of Justice is set."

Forget Nigeria, how do you account for the superior levels of trust in non-Christian societies such as those of Singapore and Japan, and their significantly lower levels of crime, when compared with what you call 'Christian' nations? Can the values that gave rise to these two societies be extracted and made to thrive independent of the dogma which supposedly gave rise to them? If so, wouldn't the dogma itself be rendered meaningless?

[ConservativeDude]

Right on. In this regard, Rand was correct. As was Mises, at least as Mises sets forth in Human Action...and as you note, the Founders....