Posted on 09/07/2005 11:11:32 AM PDT by neverdem
what a bunch of poppycock
My take:
License -- individual action is unfettered. Anything goes. If it feels good, do it. The Modern approach. Santorum apparently doesn't like this. Neither do I. Libertarians support this more than either Republicans or Democrats.
Liberty -- society is unencumbered by layers of government restriction. You can live where you want, work where you want. Society may restrict individual action, and basic economic reality may restrict individual action even more, but government restrictions are intended to be minimized. The Republicans support this more than the Democrats.
Freedom -- individual actions are enabled. You want to go to college? Government will pay for it. You want to have an abortion? Government will pay for it. You are free to do as you wish, and be sure that others will bail you out if things go wrong. Democrats support this more than Republicans.
I have read Conscience of a Conservative. If Santorum doesn't agree with Goldwater, he's no ally and I hope he goes down in 2006. He's a RINO waiting for a majority [of RINOs] from the sounds of it. Sick. Just sick.
Quite different is "the conservative view of freedom," "the liberty our Founders understood." This is "freedom coupled with the responsibility to something bigger or higher than the self." True liberty is freedom in the service of virtue -- not "the freedom to be as selfish as I want to be," or "the freedom to be left alone," but "the freedom to attend to one's duties -- ”duties to God, to family, and to neighbors."
Government is incapable of distinguishing between those two freedoms. Pretending that it will is significantly responsible for what ails the American family in particular and civic virtue generally.
BINGO!
I agree with Santorum. An individual is not the basis of society. The family is because a family is a microcosm of all that society is: first, a unification of individuals. A society exists so that the individual can survive, grow and reach goals. If you do not believe that, then it seems to me, that any individual would have the right to raise the child of any other individual, or are children not considered individuals with rights?
I don't know that I believe in all the government programs that Santorum supports; I'd have to know more about them than is given in this article. I do know that government should not make laws which hamper the family or destroy its rights.
you need to add the CONSEQUENCE and OBLIGATIONS side of the balance sheet to each of your definitions.
Senator Santorum is a bit of a Noodle, but this author's got a whole 'nother set of problems.
Huh? I thought it was an excellent essay. I think Santorum is doing a service to articulate his position in this way. The odd thing is that the libertarian right has tended to control the polemics of the entire right, but many on the right only parrot those talking points with out really believing them. Thus Bush who apparently doesn't care much about fiscal restraint, hasn't cut anything, won't veto bloated spending bills, etc.
People should be free to think or believe whatever they want. The problems start when they want to use the power of government to impose what they believe on others. I would suggest that Santorium should reconsider government's role. Government never learns. Let the people make their own mistakes; at least then they have a chance.
bookmark
looks that way.
License -- individual action is unfettered. Anything goes. If it feels good, do it. The Modern approach. Santorum apparently doesn't like this. Neither do I. Libertarians support this more than either Republicans or Democrats.
Obligation: No obligations to anyone but yourself
Consequences: Bad things can happen and no one should be blamed except the individual who made choices that led to certain consequences.
Liberty -- society is unencumbered by layers of government restriction. You can live where you want, work where you want. Society may restrict individual action, and basic economic reality may restrict individual action even more, but government restrictions are intended to be minimized. The Republicans support this more than the Democrats.
Obligation: Individuals have obligations to other individuals and to society in general. Social constructions, such as the family or church, become centerpieces of social interaction. Individuals are valued, but are secondary to larger social forces. Government intrusion is to be expected if things go very wrong, and so society attempts to ameliorate problems within itself so that government intrusion is not invited.
Consequences: Anti-social behavior may lead to ostracism and perhaps even vigilante justice. Those who do not try to get along can expect little social assistance. Economic realities may be painful, although churches and charitable organizations are apt to cushion the blow to some extent.
Freedom -- individual actions are enabled. You want to go to college? Government will pay for it. You want to have an abortion? Government will pay for it. You are free to do as you wish, and be sure that others will bail you out if things go wrong. Democrats support this more than Republicans.
Obligation: No obligations to anyone but yourself. Society, however, and government itself is expected to have endless obligations to the individual.
Consequences: People who support this type of Freedom expect to be bailed out when trouble strikes.
I think the libertarian position is more "anything goes" as long as it doesn't infringe the liberty of others.
Keeping in mind that during the 60's the Left made a concerted effort to have folks do drugs, etc. in an effort to destroy American society. I think it is this that has confused many liberals (and conservatives) into thinking that you can be leftist and libertarian simultaneously, when in fact the positions are in extreme conflict.
The meaning you attach to the word "freedom" is again the leftist meaning, exactly, but not the traditional one on which America was founded. I don't mean that at all when I use the word. FA Hayek discusses at more length in "The Road to Serfdom," as many of us remember.
I don't really disagree with your comments, but I'm not sure how they are responsive to mine.
better.
Goldwater was a radical libertarian who enthusiastically supported homosexuality and abortion. Peggy Goldwater, the wife of his youth, who died when he was about 66 years old, was an actual member of the national board of directors of Planned Parenthood USA from approximately 1940 to her death in 1975. To Peggy Goldwater's credit, she was part of the incoming group in a 1940 purge of the PP Board who swept the overt Nazi sympathizers like Margaret Sanger from the PP board. OTOH it would appear that the Sangers and the Lothrop Stoddards and their ilk had, through their overt praise of the Nazi Eugenics courts become grave public relations liabilities. Barry Goldwater, in spite of Reagan's magnificent nationally televised speech on his behalf in the 1964 campaign, never supported Reagan in return for any presidential nomination. Barry bragged that he had brought his own daughter to have her abortion(s). He also bragged that the homosexuality of several of his descendants was nobody's business but their own. Goldwater's morality was limited to matters other than sexual ethics or Judaeo-Christian morality. He objected wildly during his presidential campaign to a supportive group: Mothers for a Moral America because they touched on sexual morality with which he did not agree. Barry Goldwater was certainly colorful, unquestionably eccentric and quite dishonest in politics at least in his later years. Facing near certain defeat at the hands of a pro-life Democrat Bill Schultz (?) in 1980, Goldwater called Arizona pro-life leaders and purported to surrender to them if they would endorse him on the last weekend of the campaign. They made the colossal error of endorsing him. He squeaked into re-election by a sliver and then proceeded to tell the pro-lifers that he was going to vote pro-abort anyway and, since he would not be running for re-election, there was nothing they could do about it. This was accompanied by some impious flapdoodle about seeing the shade of dead Peggy and not wanting to disappoint her.
Reagan, on the other hand, had been a pro-abort as governor of California in his earliest years, signing a very pro-abort law passed by the California General Assembly. Within a year, Reagan, as governor, was going door-to-door with petitions for an initiative to outlaw abortion. He had seen the light. He never waffled thereafter and he committed the previously Planned Parenthood Bush the Elder (whose mother Dorithy served on the PP Board with Peggy Goldwater) to public support of the pro-life cause. Dubya is pro-life on his own via his faith. Reagan wrote a book against abortion and published it while in the White House and addressed the annual Pro-Life March each year he was president.
Like Ayn Rand (in an absolutely hysterical issue of her Ayn Rand letter pleading with her gulls to support Gerald Ford over Reagan in 1976 to save the sacred abortion holocaust, an illegitimate and unjustified initiation of force en masse if there ever was one), Goldwater viciously opposed Reagan for the 1976 nomination, even making a commercial warning California Republicans that Reagan would be a serious risk for starting a nuclear war (the same sort of commercial lie that Lyndon Johnson used to bury Goldwater in 1964). Of course Reagan's election four and eight years later resulted in the evaporation of the soviet union in the face of Reagan's restoration of American military strength and resolve against not only the soviets but also against numerous weak-kneed cabinet officers and his own wife.
` When Goldwater wrote Conscience of a Conservative, abortion was not an issue. Santorum agrees with Goldwater's book on national defense, military spending, guns, keeping taxes in check, the evil of communism and other totalitarian systems, the senselessness and evil of most forms of regulation, etc. The difference between the two men is very much a difference over family, abortion, sexual perversion and Santorum wins on each difference.
Santorum may lose his re-election bid because the Demonrats have gotten Bob Casey, Jr., to ignore their despising of his late father and run as a PRO-LIFE, PRO-FAMILY candidate against him. Thus, the race comes down to one between morality advocated by one who makes governmental Santa Claus promises (Casey, Jr., who is not the man his father was) and morality advocated by a common sense conservative (Santorum, who is one of the two or three best young GOP Senators).
If you are hunting for RINOs, then look for "Republicans" who support or even abide the wanton slaughter by slicing, dicing and hamburgerization of innocent unborn babies for the convenience of the spoiled pouty homicidal set like Goldwater and Goldwater's daughter. You won't go wrong.
Goldwater was a radical libertarian who enthusiastically supported homosexuality and abortion. Peggy Goldwater, the wife of his youth, who died when he was about 66 years old, was an actual member of the national board of directors of Planned Parenthood USA from approximately 1940 to her death in 1975. To Peggy Goldwater's credit, she was part of the incoming group in a 1940 purge of the PP Board who swept the overt Nazi sympathizers like Margaret Sanger from the PP board. OTOH it would appear that the Sangers and the Lothrop Stoddards and their ilk had, through their overt praise of the Nazi Eugenics courts become grave public relations liabilities. Barry Goldwater, in spite of Reagan's magnificent nationally televised speech on his behalf in the 1964 campaign, never supported Reagan in return for any presidential nomination. Barry bragged that he had brought his own daughter to have her abortion(s). He also bragged that the homosexuality of several of his descendants was nobody's business but their own. Goldwater's morality was limited to matters other than sexual ethics or Judaeo-Christian morality. He objected wildly during his presidential campaign to a supportive group: Mothers for a Moral America because they touched on sexual morality with which he did not agree. Barry Goldwater was certainly colorful, unquestionably eccentric and quite dishonest in politics at least in his later years. Facing near certain defeat at the hands of a pro-life Democrat Bill Schultz (?) in 1980, Goldwater called Arizona pro-life leaders and purported to surrender to them if they would endorse him on the last weekend of the campaign. They made the colossal error of endorsing him. He squeaked into re-election by a sliver and then proceeded to tell the pro-lifers that he was going to vote pro-abort anyway and, since he would not be running for re-election, there was nothing they could do about it. This was accompanied by some impious flapdoodle about seeing the shade of dead Peggy and not wanting to disappoint her.
Reagan, on the other hand, had been a pro-abort as governor of California in his earliest years, signing a very pro-abort law passed by the California General Assembly. Within a year, Reagan, as governor, was going door-to-door with petitions for an initiative to outlaw abortion. He had seen the light. He never waffled thereafter and he committed the previously Planned Parenthood Bush the Elder (whose mother Dorithy served on the PP Board with Peggy Goldwater) to public support of the pro-life cause. Dubya is pro-life on his own via his faith. Reagan wrote a book against abortion and published it while in the White House and addressed the annual Pro-Life March each year he was president.
Like Ayn Rand (in an absolutely hysterical issue of her Ayn Rand letter pleading with her gulls to support Gerald Ford over Reagan in 1976 to save the sacred abortion holocaust, an illegitimate and unjustified initiation of force en masse if there ever was one), Goldwater viciously opposed Reagan for the 1976 nomination, even making a commercial warning California Republicans that Reagan would be a serious risk for starting a nuclear war (the same sort of commercial lie that Lyndon Johnson used to bury Goldwater in 1964). Of course Reagan's election four and eight years later resulted in the evaporation of the soviet union in the face of Reagan's restoration of American military strength and resolve against not only the soviets but also against numerous weak-kneed cabinet officers and his own wife.
` When Goldwater wrote Conscience of a Conservative, abortion was not an issue. Santorum agrees with Goldwater's book on national defense, military spending, guns, keeping taxes in check, the evil of communism and other totalitarian systems, the senselessness and evil of most forms of regulation, etc. The difference between the two men is very much a difference over family, abortion, sexual perversion and Santorum wins on each difference.
Santorum may lose his re-election bid because the Demonrats have gotten Bob Casey, Jr., to ignore their despising of his late father and run as a PRO-LIFE, PRO-FAMILY candidate against him. Thus, the race comes down to one between morality advocated by one who makes governmental Santa Claus promises (Casey, Jr., who is not the man his father was) and morality advocated by a common sense conservative (Santorum, who is one of the two or three best young GOP Senators).
If you are hunting for RINOs, then look for "Republicans" who support or even abide the wanton slaughter by slicing, dicing and hamburgerization of innocent unborn babies for the convenience of the spoiled pouty homicidal set like Goldwater and Goldwater's daughter. You won't go wrong.
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