Will the Right Find Libertarianism?

"Freedom" has long been a right-wing rallying cry for self-identified patriots ranging from John Birchers to tea party protesters to increasingly extreme members of the Republican establishment. They're particularly passionate about the freedom to own and openly carry guns and freedom from federal taxation (but not necessarily federal benefits). Otherwise, their most consistent attachments to freedom tend to be rhetorical, unless freedom means restricting reproductive choice, same-sex relationships, medical marijuana, or sexually explicit speech and permitting discrimination against people who do not acknowledge Jesus as their savior. For some prominent conservatives -- like John McCain, Mitt Romney, Sarah Palin, and Dick Cheney -- freedom also entails the establishment of a national security state empowered to arrest and imprison summarily people suspected of terrorism and to spy on people suspected of nothing in particular, thanks to a ubiquitous but largely invisible surveillance system.

There are, of course, exceptions to this statism. The CATO Institute, generally associated with the right because of its commitment to free markets, is equally, if less notoriously, committed to civil liberty. CATO is unusual in its consistent libertarianism, which means, however, that (like Reason magazine), it is a creature of neither the right nor the left. A recent CATO report estimates that some 14 percent of Americans also qualify as libertarian, meaning that they're fiscally conservative and socially liberal (although it's unclear if fiscal conservatives who believe "the less government the better" are willing to surrender their own government benefits, from Pell grants to Medicare).

Are you trying to take it from the top? That line doesn't mean anything like what you want it to mean. This has been explained to you repeatedly in this thread by myself and others. You haven't been able to address those explainations.

Your representation of Reagan's intent is based on your own values as a libertarian. They are inconsistent with a man who would invent and implement anything like the federal war on drugs.

Go ahead and deny it, it was said.......by Ronald Reagan.

This is you being a weasel. You promised to leave, because you couldn't think of anything intelligent to say, but you couldn't even do that right. So you made up a straw man argument. You've brought up that quote dozens of times. On this thread and others. People smarter than me have explained it to you. Yet here you are suggesting someone denied Reagan ever said it. You can't be that stupid. Read the thread and tell me Reagan denied it.

For what it's worth, Reagan and I both agree that Enlightenmnet and libertarianism formed the basis of Conservative philosophy for the Founding Fathers. But even they quickly abandoned classic libertarian ideals as unworkable when they got down to the business of governing.

What is an "explaination"?

People who waste time commenting on typos do so because they have nothing relevant to add. It's a favortite stategy for losers with a desperation for the last word. As you have commented on my homepage on past threads, and you're so proud of your own lame hompage, we both know that you already knew this. We also know that you you threatened to leave and then didn't and that you continue to hang around this thread and repeat previously discredited quotes and comments. And obviously you have no problem debating historical concepts without understanding the actual history behind them. For example:

BTW, Nixon invented and implemented the war on (some) drugs.

When I first made that point with you, several threads ago, I was careful to add something like "as we know it" or "as it is today" to the end of the sentence. I did so the first five or six times I brought it up on this thread. But since we are, discussing the contrast of the the Drug War on Reagan's standing as a libertarian, the disclaimer becomes superfluous. Nixon recognized a problem, and coined the term "War On Drugs." It was Reagan who expanded the Federal law enforcement initiative against drug trafficing and essentially gave us what we have today. Even libertarians understand this. You do not, because you are too lazy to comprehend even the simplest historical facts. This point is not in contention even among liberals. You are completely on your own if you wish to persue it.

Remember wage and price controls?

No idea what you're talking about here. Reagan abandoned Nixon's wage and price controls. But before you think that makes him an economic libertarian, you need to educated yourself enough to know that that Reagan also imposed tarriffs on several items, including cars, electronics, steel, agriculture, and textiles. The libertarian Cato Institute has attacked him many times on this. You can read well enough to critique people's spelling when what they're saying makes you feel insecure. Google is your friend.

People like me are conservative.

Congradulations. Eva Green wants to have sex with me. Wanting something to be true doesn't make it true. Believing it to be true won't help either. These are the facts: American Conservative political philosophy comes from the same place as libertarian political philosphy. The Federalists, who included Wasington, Franklin, and Hamilton recognised the need for government intrustion into personal liberty as consistent with the principles of the Founding Documents. Libertarians by definition reject those intrusions. In essence, libertarians split from Conservatives during the first presidential term, with Jefferson being the most libertarian Founding Father (BTW, many historians credit Franklin and Adams as much as Jefferson for the content of the document). Paine is otherwise the most noteworthy libertarian.

Libertarian and Conservativism continue to overlap on several important concepts, be the two have continued to diverge to the point where there are otherwise incompatible, and often in direct conflict with one another. When libertarians claim that a particular conservative is not "conservative" enough, what they really mean is that he or she are not libertarian enough on some issues. I have noted a dozen cases on this thread where a Conservative took a correct position that would be in direct opposition to a conservative one. In fact, there actually some conservative positions that I disagree with myself. That doesn't make them any less conservative. Libertarians are their own political movement because they disagree with a large part of conservative political philosophy.

At some point it ought to have become obvious to you that I know a heck a lot more than you do about this subject. I WAS a libertarian for a few confused years.

Ronald Reagan was conservative.

Reagan happens to be the modern conservative litmus test. I have already demonstrated how badly libertarians fail that test.

People who want to parse what Ronald Reagan said about libertarian philosophy are Republican cheerleaders.

There's a big difference between "parsing" and clarifying a quote taken out of context. If Ronald Reagan had run around in the seventies talking about what a big libertarian he was, you still wouldn't have a point, because Conservatives define Conservativism by what Reagan did as president. Conseravatives have a number of bones to pick with Reagan before then. But the fact that Reagan one time in his life said something vaguely positive about libertianism will never translate into "Reagan was a libertian" no matter how many times you repeat it. Churchill said nice things about Hitler in the 30's and Stalin in the 40's. Does that make him a Nazi or a Communist. Of course not. You judge a man by his body of work, and, as we've gone over several times here, no honest libertarian could stomach Reagan's body of work. And yet Conservatives celebrate this. Again, all of this has been covered in detail. You have consistency refused to these facts, because they make your entire argument/fantasy fall apart.

We've all seen how productive that has been since roughly 1992.

No conservative I know thinks we have had a true conservative president since Reagan. You're making stuff up here to help your argument. Bush(43) came close on some points. However, on several key issues that libertarians had the biggest problem with, notably opposition to stem cell research, partial birth abortion, the war in Iraq, the Patriot Act, Guantanamo Bay, and others. The point on this thread is not whether Bush was right or wrong here. The point that I am trying to point through that thick skull of yours is that Conservatives agreed (and continued to agree ) with what Bush did. And Reagan would have agreed. Libertarians, obviously, continue to hate it. Calling classic conservative policies "Republican" because they are not libertarian enough to suit you is, of course, idiotic.

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