Politicized social conservatives are to morality what politicized socialist liberals are to economics. In both cases, they can't be bothered to get off their butts and do the required work. (In the former case, the required work is leadership and conversion via persuasion and example; in the latter case, the required work is earning the desired standard of living via voluntary transactions.) Instead, they want the guvmint to do it for them. It doesn't work.
So clearly we don’t need murder laws, right? Because good example and persuasion will certainly win out, right?
Instead, they want the guvmint to do it for them. It doesn't work.
Yes, I believe this has become the standard position of both left and right. It is unfortunate. Look at the "conservatives" on this site that would blame libertarians for the failures of statism. Isn't that ironic? That is how far the entrenched statism has inveigled the conservative movement. Government, though, is not the solution. Right now that government forces "tolerance" onto everyone, and that filters into our children and ends with the implication that the aberrant are actually the norm. This leads to rampant social liberalism, which so many reject. However, we don't need to use that government to start forcing people to agree with us. If only we return people's freedoms to them then they will not have to endure this phony tolerance, and once again the values of the people will be asserted and the aberrant will again be treated as aberrant. Aberrance won't go away of course, as it never will, but it won't exert the influence it has for so long on our society. That is what we should seek, not government control. People need to stop blaming libertarians for their own statist failures and open their eyes to what big government has been getting them.
And they want the government to be the arbiter and enforcer of moral rectitude. How bizarre is THAT?
What we have currently is the result of allowing government where is does not belong. They don't sem to understand that. They seem to think that the current trend of government fostering (heck, subsidizng) irresponsibility and immorality is some accident of history rather than the predictable result of the collectivization of conscience.
Actually, steve "B", we just don't want the government to discourage it, as it does today. People who make statements like you just made must be ignorant of the fact that it "worked" quite well up until about the 60's and 70's when a bunch of social liberals decided those mores were passe and had social liberalism enshrined into law through the courts. Single mothers, abortion as birth control, and revolving door marriages are not good for a stable society. The social culture of Bill Ayers doesn't work except in a classroom.