Posted on 06/17/2013 7:18:47 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
More people value individual liberty, but we might be losing the moral guardrails.
Are Americans becoming more libertarian on cultural issues? I see evidence that they are, in poll findings and election results on three unrelated issues: marijuana legalization, same-sex marriage, and gun rights.
Start with pot. Last November voters in the states of Colorado and Washington voted to legalize marijuana, by a margin of 55 to 45 percent in Colorado (more than Barack Obama’s margin in the state) and by 56 to 44 percent in Washington. In contrast, in 2010, California voters rejected legalization 53 to 47 percent. These results and poll data suggest a general movement toward legal marijuana.
State legislatures in Denver and Olympia have been grappling with regulatory legislation amid uncertainty over whether federal laws — and federal-law enforcers — override their state laws. But marijuana has already become effectively legal in many of the states that have reduced penalties for possession of small amounts or have legalized medical marijuana. You can easily find addresses and phone numbers of dispensaries on the Web.
Same-sex marriage, rejected in statewide votes between 1998 and 2008 and most recently in North Carolina in May 2012, was approved by voters in Maine and Maryland in November 2012, and voters then rejected a ban on it in Minnesota. Since then, legislators in Delaware, Minnesota, and Rhode Island have voted to legalize same-sex marriage. A dozen states and the District of Columbia now have similar laws that would have been unthinkable two decades ago. I have yet to see signs of political backlash. Polls show that support for same-sex marriage is well nigh universal among young Americans, but it has also been rising among their elders.
To some it may seem odd to yoke marijuana and gay rights, generally thought of as causes of the Left, with gun rights, supported more by the political Right. Yet in all three cases, Americans have been moving toward greater liberty for the individual.
One landmark was the first law, passed in Florida in 1987, allowing ordinary citizens to carry concealed weapons. Many, including me, thought that the result would be frequent shootouts in the streets. That hasn’t happened. Almost all ordinary citizens, we’ve learned, handle guns with appropriate restraint, as they do with the other potentially deadly weapon that people encounter every day, the automobile. Concealed-carry laws have spread to 40 states, with few ill effects. Politicians who opposed them initially, such as former Michigan governor Jennifer Granholm, have not sought their repeal.
In contrast, voters have reacted negatively to gun-control proposals, even after horrific events like the Newtown massacre. That was apparent in the Senate’s rejection of the Toomey-Manchin gun-registration bill.
What about the cultural issue that most pundits mention first, abortion? Attitudes have remained roughly the same: Most Americans think abortion should be, in Bill Clinton’s phrase, safe, legal, and rare. Young Americans, despite their libertarian leanings on same-sex marriage, are slightly less in favor of abortion rights than their elders are. They’ve seen sonograms, and all of them by definition owe their existence to a decision not to abort. And from the point of view of the unborn child, abortion is the opposite of liberating.
Back in the conformist America of the 1950s — a nation of greater income equality and stronger labor unions, as liberals like to point out — marijuana, homosexual acts, and abortion weren’t political issues. They were crimes. And opposition to gun-control measures in the 1950s and 1960s was much less widespread and vigorous than it is today.
Is this libertarian trend a good thing for the nation? Your answer will depend on your values.
I’m inclined to look favorably on it. I think the large majority of Americans can use marijuana and guns responsibly. Same-sex marriage can be seen as liberating, but it also includes an element of restraint. Abortions in fact have become more rare over a generation.
But I do see something to worry about. In his bestseller Coming Apart, my American Enterprise Institute colleague Charles Murray shows that college-educated Americans have handled no-fault divorce and other liberating trends of the 1970s with self-restraint.
But at the bottom of the social scale, we have seen an unraveling, with out-of-wedlock births, continuing joblessness, lack of social connectedness, and less civic involvement.
In conformist America, the old prohibitions provided these people with guardrails, as the Wall Street Journal’s Daniel Henninger has written. In today’s more libertarian America, the guardrails may be gone.
— Michael Barone, senior political analyst for the Washington Examiner, is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a Fox News Channel contributor, and a co-author of The Almanac of American Politics.
Sure, people don’t jump up to tell the world that they are libertarian just to be against federal laws, they do it to declare that they are followers of the libertarian philosophy, of let it all hang out.
Just as open borders is federal, the feds also have to have a standard for which marriages to recognize, for instance, widow benefits for the military.
I understand how libertarianism has been used by the left and right over the last several decades. But the intense propaganda and brutal attacks on those that favor natural marriage is authoritarian. The rise of a tyrannical state and the push for same sex marriage seem to go along nicely. The gun rights and pot legalization movements are in response to an overbearing state. In contrast the gay marriage dynamic is the product of a state gone mad.
Drug use and the homosexual agenda and abortion and open borders is all just the major elements of the libertarian war against America and conservatism.
Libertarianism is a part of the left, that is why it’s chief passions are drugs, gays, immigration and abortion.
very true
Try to get them to admit that, they will fight you in the halls, fight you in the alleys, fight you in the fields and on the beaches, fight day and night, for drugs and gay marriage and abortion, all the while denying that they are doing it.
Libertarianism is the ultra kook anarchy fringe of the left.
Marriage has always had a legal status, due to inheritance, responsibilities, etc. For millenia.
We can find strands of libertarian thought on the left. But the civil libertarian push from lefties has always been tempered by their belief that the state should be active. But we find a more robust brand of libertarian thought on the right. There are lots of variations, but I find the strand influenced by Ayn Rand (Objectivism) to be noteworthy. These libertarians on the right would likely favor gun rights, be pro-life, and embrace natural marriage.
Regardless, the move to enact some homosexual agenda is not libertarian. It is authoritarian - dedicated to destroying opposition and tied to the destruction of our constitutional order.
I don’t disagree with you that such aborhorrent should be deterred, especially from the public arena.
I just don’t see, as a practical matter, any forceful measures being pulled off until the federal government is removed from the equation.
“Regardless, the move to enact some homosexual agenda is not libertarian. It is authoritarian - dedicated to destroying opposition and tied to the destruction of our constitutional order.”
Correct. They are libertines seeking special legal protection for their perversions. They are not libertarians, who would permit private action against such perversion.
You are merely ignoring libertarianism and claiming them as conservatives, in other words, just making things up.
Libertarians are in many ways even more radical than their merely liberal brothers.
Libertarianism is clearly pro-abortion, pro-homosexual, pro-porn, pro-gambling and drugs, just pro-lefty on such issues, and of course, open borders.
IMMIGRATION:
“”The Issue: We welcome all refugees to our country and condemn the efforts of U.S. officials to create a new “Berlin Wall” which would keep them captive. We condemn the U.S. government’s policy of barring those refugees from our country and preventing Americans from assisting their passage to help them escape tyranny or improve their economic prospects.
The Principle: We hold that human rights should not be denied or abridged on the basis of nationality. Undocumented non-citizens should not be denied the fundamental freedom to labor and to move about unmolested. Furthermore, immigration must not be restricted for reasons of race, religion, political creed, age or sexual preference. We oppose government welfare and resettlement payments to non-citizens just as we oppose government welfare payments to all other persons.
Solutions: We condemn massive roundups of Hispanic Americans and others by the federal government in its hunt for individuals not possessing required government documents. We strongly oppose all measures that punish employers who hire undocumented workers. Such measures repress free enterprise, harass workers, and systematically discourage employers from hiring Hispanics.
Transitional Action: We call for the elimination of all restrictions on immigration, the abolition of the Immigration and Naturalization Service and the Border Patrol, and a declaration of full amnesty for all people who have entered the country illegally.””
Nonsense, you two are trying to misrepresent the libertarian view of “individual liberty”, here is what they believe about sex preferences and government.
This IS libertarianism, it isn’t ANTI libertarianism.
1.3 Personal Relationships
Sexual orientation, preference, gender, or gender identity should have no impact on the government’s treatment of individuals, such as in current marriage, child custody, adoption, immigration or military service laws. Government does not have the authority to define, license or restrict personal relationships. Consenting adults should be free to choose their own sexual practices and personal relationships.
Basing a definition of libertarianism on the platform of the Libertarian Party is like basing a definition of “republic” on the platform of the Republican Party.
Nonsense, the party that libertarians formed is a perfect expression of libertarian thought, philosophy, participation, and positions in politics and government.
That's your assesment. Do you think you'll be able to ram it down everyone's throat with nothing more than endless repitition and declaring any contrary opinion "nonsense" and accusing people of "making things up"?
Libertarians make it up to fit the audience, that is why they despise seeing the libertarian positions written down.
On freerepublic they play the game of fighting tooth and nail to promote their leftism, while denying that they are doing it.
If we are all conservatives, then great, we are all against social liberalism and in agreement.
Convince me you're smarter that he was.
LOL, I’m smart enough to know that the little quote that you cling to is all that you have for Reagan’s long, long, political life that led to him becoming the hero of social conservatives.
That was candidate Reagan in 1975 speaking to a tiny libertarian audience and he opened with just what one would expect from a good candidate, a big brotherly embrace, and then he slowly proceeded to explain how he was actually a social conservative and for a strong national defense.
The greatest election showing that the libertarians ever had, was RUNNING AGAINST REAGAN IN 1980.
“Basing a definition of libertarianism on the platform of the Libertarian Party is like basing a definition of “republic” on the platform of the Republican Party.”
Indeed. The liberal group that calls itself the “Libertarian Party” has cherry picked some libertarian ideas, but is really just another statist liberal group seekng to use government power to impose its libertine beliefs.
Well, if you two are telling us that libertarians are actually just social conservatives with conservative economics, then it really seems strange that we even have libertarians.
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