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To: goorala

Open borders and abortion... note the “Big L Libertarianism” as opposed to small l.


5 posted on 02/17/2008 12:52:29 PM PST by Rob112586 ("...a decrease in the quantity of legislation generally means an increase in the quality of life.")
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To: Rob112586
I've worked with a lot of "L" Libertarians in California initiative campaigns. Conservatives and Libertarians align on a lot of issues. My one observation is that the only thing Libertarians really seem to want is legal dope. Everything else is just window dressing.

As far as the "War On Drugs" is concerned, during the 1960s the generation who had won WWII thought of "War" as something that ended in decisive victory and utterly destroyed the evil it was waged against.

- Got an insurgency in Indo China? Let's have a War In VietNam! (8 years, 56 kilobodies, trillions down the tubes and America lost.)

- Got poverty? Let's have a War On Poverty! (The society as a whole saw great increases in personal wealth but the poor lost.)

- Got Cancer? Let's have a War On Cancer! (Some cures but we are still taking a lot of casualties.)

- Got a problem with people using drugs? Let's have a War On Drugs! (We have more illegal drugs and more kins of illegal drugs than ever before. We've spent billions and criticisms of Libertarians aside our civil liberties HAVE suffered.)

The problem is, if you look at wars throughout history very few have ended the way WWII did - with Mussolini on a meat hook, the Red Army taking Berlin and killing Hitler and the A-Bomb convincing Hirohito that he may be next.

Wars usually DO NOT end decisively. They often sputter on for years after "Major Combat Operations" cease. Worse than that, they usually don't solve the issues that the parties going to war wanted to solve when they started the war in the first place. Take the War of 1812. When the war was settled there was nothing in the treaty about the rights of the Indians (Britain's issue) or the rights of immigrant seaman to be safe from impressment (the main US issue).

War is generally a bad idea if it can be avoided and it's time to end the use of the "War" paradigm for trying to solve social issues as well.

48 posted on 02/17/2008 2:04:49 PM PST by InABunkerUnderSF ("Gun Control" is not about the guns. "Illegal Immigration" is not about the immigration)
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