Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. ~ from the Declaration of Independence
Man, you don't just drink the Kool-Aid. You're drunk on it.
Thomas Jefferson was writing a document that he knew would have a residual audience composed of people very much like you. You'd think that after 240 and some-odd-years that viewing the need for some government -- a very limited government -- would be acceptable. The problem is that you and people like you are accustomed to an expanding government, you're drunk on it, and cannot see a society being governed through any other lens except the one that sees the need for more of governance; it shows in your responses to me. You and people like you are the problem, in my opinion, no matter which side of the spectrum you hail from.
Excellent! Then you should have no problem with America having a Muslim majority.
If they were Muslims of the non-theocratic mold who cherished liberty and didn't seek to impose their views on others, then I would prefer them in the majority. I do not fear people for their backgrounds and ethnicities alone.
Now, your response might be, we won't let them legislate their values. In that case, you're imposing your values on them.
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America. ~ from the Preamble of the United States Constitution
The Preamble was the whole purpose behind the U.S. Constitution. One of its basic tenants was to secure liberties by providing a very simple framework for establishing a limited government so that paternalists would not legislate at the federal level. I say the constitution should protect me from having legislation enacted that erodes my liberties. You say that my view is, in turn, not protecting the liberty of others to erode all liberty. Who do you suppose is most out of step with the concept of being an American, you or I?
You see the problem?
I believe I do see it. Do you see it?
Uh, it would be cheaper than foreign aid to just add Mexico, Haiti, and nearly all of Africa as states? How do you figure that? You do realize (don't you?) that if we did that, the newly admitted states would immediately vote in a socialist government in the United States.
Don't you think that we would should be very discriminate on who we admit. And don't you think that, given the framework -- a framework largely ignored because of people who think as you do -- that any state admitted would have only a certain number of representatives.
The real difference between libertarians and Marxists isn't that the former are for less government and the latter are for total government. Both advocate policies which lead to total government. The difference is that Marxism intends for that to happen, while libertarians fumble their way into it because they don't understand human nature.
Based on our dialog with each other, I'm willing to concede a little on this point. It is not because we don't understand human nature, though. We understand it alright, we just are not doing a very good job of changing the desire of mankind to enslave itself. I still think that striving for liberty -- in the face of human nature and his quest to be tightly governed -- is a worthy goal.
A society with traditional Judeo-Christian moral values will need less government on average.
This is ignorant on two fronts. First, Jesus was sent specifically to reform the Chosen People who had ruined God's Word with corrupt governance and perverted religious beliefs, so scratch the Judeo portion. And many of today's Christians spend far too much time in the Pentateuch, really, where you will find much of the source that led to the perversions. Many (but certainly not all) of today's Christians are the Pharisees of yesterday.
So you support government that doesn't intrude into "at least some matters"?
When I wrote that a government has to intrude into some matters what I meant was that some government is necessary as to protect people from causing injury to one another. When one or more people trample the liberty of another, society has to have a method adjudicate the matter. However, contracts, prearranged mediation, and pre-agreed-upon judges would also go a long way in limiting the power and influence of a judiciary.
Thomas Jefferson was writing a document that he knew would have a residual audience composed of people very much like you. You'd think that after 240 and some-odd-years that viewing the need for some government -- a very limited government -- would be acceptable. The problem is that you and people like you are accustomed to an expanding government, you're drunk on it, and cannot see a society being governed through any other lens except the one that sees the need for more of governance; it shows in your responses to me. You and people like you are the problem, in my opinion, no matter which side of the spectrum you hail from.
I don't think Thomas Jefferson would have had any problem whatsoever with my position on the issues. He would no doubt find it unfortunate that the federal government has expanded to the point that people who believe in limited government are forced to fight fire with fire to survive. But he would have found it preferable to submitting to federal supremacy. Jefferson was an intelligent man who understood that nothing in life works out precisely as intended and that political theory can only go so far. He struggled with the idea of slavery, as an obvious example. Read American Slavery, American Freedom by Edmund Morgan to see how many early Americans struggled with that issue. On the one hand, slavery obviously restricted the liberty of a large portion of the population. However, the fear was that if they were freed and given the rights of citizens, they would form a voting block that would eliminate liberty for everyone. Life is full of these paradoxes. Would we have our Bill of Rights if we had had universal suffrage in early America? Almost certainly we would not, because the people who weren't allowed to vote were the constituencies for big government. Rather than having ten amendments limiting government, we'd have had ten amendments authorizing government controls and promising handouts.
Well, we now have universal suffrage. That alone radically changes the concept of limited government, and makes it more difficult to maintain. It brings into stark reality more than ever the need for a society based on moral values, because without it, look what happens. Take a look at what's happened to blacks and women as a result of the sexual revolution of the sixties. The black family has been destroyed. There are millions of women out there with kids who have been abandoned by the father. And, by the way, the number of so-called unwanted babies actually goes up, not down, when abortion becomes legal. These constituencies vote overwhelmingly for socialist Democrat candidates. What do you propose to do? Strip them of their voting rights? Convince them to vote for limited government when they "need" big government? It's not going to work. Once you have an immoral, or even amoral, society, you're going to end up with masses of people who demand big government.
If they were Muslims of the non-theocratic mold The Preamble was the whole purpose behind the U.S. Constitution. One of its basic tenants was to secure liberties by providing a very simple framework for establishing a limited government so that paternalists would not legislate at the federal level. I say the constitution should protect me from having legislation enacted that erodes my liberties. You say that my view is, in turn, not protecting the liberty of others to erode all liberty. Who do you suppose is most out of step with the concept of being an American, you or I?
No, what your position is doing is unilaterally disarming us from doing what is necessary to stop big government from expanding. Imagine a planet so far from other planets that no one believes it's possible for them to be invaded. So they ban the military on the grounds that it's unnecessary. But one day, new technology is developed which allows far away planets to invade. Someone suggests that an army needs to be raised to repel the invaders. But the "purists" say that would violate their historical ban on having a military. The result is that the planet is conquered and all of their historical traditions are destroyed.
Libertarians do the same thing. Leftists seize powers from the states using the federal government. Conservatives say that we must go to the federal level to fight this. Libertarians then chime in and say, no, going to the federal level would violate the states' rights concepts of the Founding Fathers. The result is that leftists continue to strip authority from the states until there's nothing left.
It would be wonderful if we could leave things like same-sex "marriage" and abortion completely to the states, but we can't. The left will never stop trying to take these issues from the states unless and until we put a constitutional block in the federal constitution to stop them. And a states' rights type amendment, while doing some good, would ultimately fail because the leftists would engineer local judicial fiats in the individual states, and libertarians would join leftists in creating the very type of degenerate atmosphere that would allow those rulings to stand. In Massachusetts, for example, social liberalism has enough people dependent on government that even the elected politicians can get away with murder.
Don't you think that we would should be very discriminate on who we admit. And don't you think that, given the framework -- a framework largely ignored because of people who think as you do -- that any state admitted would have only a certain number of representatives.
Obviously I think we should be very discriminate regarding whom we admit. However, you said admitting these places would be cheaper than foreign aid. It wouldn't, of course, but why would you want to admit a country in need of foreign aid as a state in the first place? I think we're all well aware that these new states would only have "x" number of representatives sent to Congress, but that would be "x" number of additional votes for socialism, unless we admitted places like Singapore or Japan or Taiwan, but those places wouldn't want to become a part of the United States. The only place I can think of that we might be able to safely add is the Canadian province of Alberta. I'd gladly add them, and they'd probably be glad to get out of Canada since the social liberals up there are crushing them and their local rights.
Based on our dialog with each other, I'm willing to concede a little on this point. It is not because we don't understand human nature, though. We understand it alright, we just are not doing a very good job of changing the desire of mankind to enslave itself. I still think that striving for liberty -- in the face of human nature and his quest to be tightly governed -- is a worthy goal.
You're not going to change mankind's desire to enslave himself. The fact that freedom is a historical aberration which can only be maintained by eternal vigilance should prove that. And eternal vigilance is incompatible with social liberalism. This is why socially liberal places become so passive and socialistic. It's why men such as Madison, Burke, and Tocqueville understood that there was a difference between the American Revolution and the French one. They understood that only a moral people can remain free. We can't have a society where homosexuals march nude down the street, pelting women and children with condoms and waving plastic sex organs in their faces, and remain free. People so lacking in personal responsibility that they feel they "need" abortion aren't going to remain free.
Libertarianism is based on a completely flawed concept of human nature. It assumes that man is by nature responsible, when in fact he is not. It assumes that someone who is irresponsible enough to contract AIDS during a wanton orgy in a bathhouse, would be the type of person who wouldn't demand that the taxpayers pay for his medical care. Guess what? He isn't going to be that kind of a person. Before the ink was dried on Roe vs. Wade, the pro-aborts were demanding taxpayer financing of abortions. Before the ink was dried on the Lawrence sodomy ruling, the gay lobby was demanding passage of a federal anti-discrimination law, and were hauling dating services such as e-Harmony into court with the demand that the government force them to provide same-sex match-ups.
This is what libertarianism leads to. You get rid of one law restricting irresponsible conduct, and the result isn't more freedom; it's the enactment of ten new laws forcing everyone to pander to the newly liberated deviants. It's anarcho-tyranny.
This is ignorant on two fronts. First, Jesus was sent specifically to reform the Chosen People who had ruined God's Word with corrupt governance and perverted religious beliefs, so scratch the Judeo portion. And many of today's Christians spend far too much time in the Pentateuch, really, where you will find much of the source that led to the perversions. Many (but certainly not all) of today's Christians are the Pharisees of yesterday.
Well, I'm not going to get into a theological discussion with you on this. But I would note that all those corrupt practices you note in the Old Testament sound a lot like libertarianism and liberal moral relativism. Satan told Eve she didn't have to listen to God, she could decide for herself what was right and what was wrong. Moses came down from the mount and found the Israelites having an orgy around a molten calf, and Aaron's lame justification was that it was what the people wanted to do. And the result of this behavior wasn't "freedom". It was a series of corrupt, despotic kings and ultimate destruction.
When I wrote that a government has to intrude into some matters what I meant was that some government is necessary as to protect people from causing injury to one another. When one or more people trample the liberty of another, society has to have a method adjudicate the matter. However, contracts, prearranged mediation, and pre-agreed-upon judges would also go a long way in limiting the power and influence of a judiciary.
Well, best of luck trying to create a libertarian utopia. You're gonna need it.
Arigato gozaimasu!