Posted on 03/07/2005 6:13:58 AM PST by rhombus
No need to debate gay marriage here. My only point is that even in Oregon a gay marriage ban passed easily. Republicans will win when they don't go squisy on social conservative issues. Reagan and Bush proved that.
Given that marriage is a religious rite, should the government "sanctify" any marriages. Government should take the Hamlet route: "We shall have no more marriages."
Let the religious institutions and individuals define marriage as they care to. Leave government out of it.
I still contend that it mattters what the issue is and how it is presented. Americans don't want Gov't in their face either... In fact, I'd say it's a hallmark principle of being an American. Why else would we demand a Constitution.
I don't know if there's one "libertarian view", but generally libertarians look dimly on attempting social engineering through government enforcement. In other words, the government would not recognize marriages (of course, you could still legally designate someone as next of kin, etc). Thus, people could publicly proclaim any personal relationship they wish. [Any kind of sexual relationship would still need to be between adults, since they are the only individuals able to legally give sexual consent.] Individual religions would decide who can get married in their churches, etc. This viewpoint respects individual liberty over the desire to maintain society's traditional structure.
The conservative view toward social engineering is that there should be a consensus morality which is enforced with the power of law. The argument is that allowing some people to live as they choose would have a corrosive impact on the fabric of society. Some would also say that it weakens the concept of marriage and weakens the family as the fundamental unit of society. This viewpoint respects the desire to maintain society's traditional structure over individual liberty.
If any libertarian or conservative disagrees with these categorizations, I'd like to hear objections. I want to put both views in a fair light to facilitate discussion.
LOL, in their dreams. :P
Now there's a statement that's clear as mud. :-) Presentation, my friend. Presentation.
Authorian states, like cults, look orderly and clean and strong from the outside. Don't be taken in. Don't lose sight of the fact that only Ceaucescu's Securitate would fight and die for communism. Did the Soviet Union ever export machinery or consumer goods that were competitive in world markets ? China does. The Soviet Union never did.
Brezhnev put the Soviet Union on total war levels of production. No state can be on total war levels of production for more than a decade without economic collapse. But a succession of weak Soviet leaders could not challenge the military and reorient priorities. Look at what the Soviets did between 1975 and 1985. Build a blue water navy. Pour vast sums into proxy wars in Africa. Pursue an aggressive policy to create Cuban-model states in Ethiopia, Angola, Mozambique, Nicaragua, Vietnam, Afghanistan, etc. Retire simple, cheap tanks and planes and replace them with dazzling high tech models like the Mig-29, SU-27, T-84, etc.
The Soviet Defence Minister who supported Gorbachev and reform was asked why he did so. He gave the day he and the Soviet high command were converted to reform. The day the Israelis destroyed the state-of-the-art Syrian SAM network in the Bekaa Valley losing only one plane and then went on to massacre the Syrian fighters. That SAM network was the best the Soviets could have built. I think it was as good as the one around Moscow. The Israelis beat it by using digital electronics to fake out the Russian radars.
A fundamental technological shift had taken place with which the smokestack Soviet Union could never hope to catch up. The digital age. The information age. And as that marshal realized, the Soviet Union would be left behind. How could a closed society adapt to the age of the Internet, the PC, the VCR, the fax ? Like Nicholas II, the Soviet Union was writing geopolitical checks that it could not cover.
The trip to the Seoul Olympics was mortifying. Here, what had once been a backwards peasant society now had a higher standard of living than the Soviet Union. Obviously the Soviet system was not working. The Soviet military looked good on paper but there was more to it than that.
I don't think most libertarians would disagree with that view of "gay marriage". Where they would go one step further is in saying that government should not sanctify heterosexual marriage either. Honor all legal contracts between two individuals, but leave the decision of who's married and who isn't for couples and churches to decide.
Conferring official sanction on one form of relationship between adults and not another is where liberals and libertarians have problems. Liberals would prefer conferring sanction on both relationships; libertarians neither. Either position is bound to horrify most social conservatives, but hopefully they can at least see the distinction between the two positions.
The way in which gay marriage is currently being imposed -- pure judicial activism -- is something conservatives and libertarians can unite in being disgusted about.
Similarly, I consider myself a Fabian libertarian: I see libertarianism as a long-term goal, not something I expect to be achieved overnight. We are not culturally set for a libertarian society. We expect too much from government and are not ready to go cold turkey.Good phrase, and I would be one too. Government involvement in the economy and society is much like an addictive drug.
My main disagreements with the LP regard their neo-isolationist foreign policy and their all-right-now approach to implementing their philosophy.
Maybe some sort of cultural consensus is needed for a libertarian society -- all the more reason to be Fabian about it -- but does it have to be a Victorian society? It seems to me that a social consensus summed up as "Mind Your Own Business" might work just as well to provide the framework of a libertarian society.Bingeaux. Busybodyism, be it cultural or governmental, is no basis for a free society. Heinlein talked of "Mrs. Grundy" as a threat to liberty, and also stressed one other point: actions have consequences.
Multiple cultures with their own rules co-existing under a limited government may be the best model. Indeed, the Victorians were somewhat like that, if one goes by the Flashman novels and similar literature. The difference between them and us is openness, and the ability to communicate. Certainly communication allows the multiple cultures to form, and indeed compete.
-Eric
What happens if the "rules" are simply wrong?
The problem with the mores of the 1900's as you describe them was the assumption that a woman could be dishonored and a man could not.
Plenty of girls were "ruined" in those days (most of them of the lower classes) with no one to defend their honor via Colt or horsewhip.
Now how we solve that problem, and what role cultural awareness plays versus legislation, is something we can fairly debate, but as a small "l"ibertarian I recognize the shortcomings of the past as well as its apparent advantages.
Mine too.
Say what?
You don't get it do you.
All that cost money. Lots of money. Money does not grow on trees. The Soviet Union was supporting an extremely aggressive foreign policy on a shrinking economic base. Like late czarist Russia it was grossly overextended and not coping well with an industrial revolution (i.e., the Information Age. the digital age). Command economies cannot respond at all to fundamental technological change. You can't do creative destruction without shutting down lots of smokestack industries and putting lots of people out of work and the Soviet Union couldn't do that.
The Soviet T-34 was the outstanding tank design of the Second World War so don't see them as low-tech at all. Their Mig-15 could only be matched by the F-86. Due to a harsh climate they built weapons simply so they could be rugged and easily maintained by inexperienced conscripts in rough conditions. Any engineering bells and whistles that would not function at zero degrees fahrenheit can be done without. Hitler never understood that. Stalinist Russia could be smokestack high tech when it wanted to be but it was not in their interest to build their equivalent of the King Tiger II.
Uh you stated what will be, IMO, a typical hillary! 2008 talking point in your reply #3 of this thread.
This is a trend whose time is long overdue. It's senseless for conservatives to support the GOP when it acts in a big government manner just because "our people" are the ones with their hands on the controls
Typical clinton strategy from 92 and from a tired old playbook.
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