Posted on 04/07/2010 5:26:04 AM PDT by listenhillary
I used to be a Kennedy-style "liberal." Then I wised up. Now I'm a libertarian.
But what does that mean?
When I asked people on the street, half had no clue.
We know that conservatives want government to conserve traditional values. They say they're for limited government, but they're pro-drug war, pro-immigration restriction and anti-abortion, and they often support "nation-building."
And so-called liberals? They tend to be anti-gun and pro-choice on abortion. They favor big, powerful government -- they say -- to make life kinder for people.
By contrast, libertarians want government to leave people alone -- in both the economic and personal spheres. Leave us free to pursue our hopes and dreams, as long as we don't hurt anybody else.
Ironically, that used to be called "liberal," which has the same root as "liberty." Several hundred years ago, liberalism was a reaction against the stifling rules imposed by aristocracy and established religion.
I wish I could call myself "liberal" now. But the word has been turned on its head. It now means health police, high taxes, speech codes and so forth.
So I can't call myself a "liberal." I'm stuck with "libertarian." If you have a better word, please let me know.
When I first explained libertarianism to my wife, she said: "That's cruel! What about the poor and the weak? Let them starve?"
I recently asked some prominent libertarians that question, including Jeffrey Miron, who teaches economics at Harvard.
"It might in some cases be a little cruel," Miron said. "But it means you're not taking from people who've worked hard to earn their income (in order) to give it to people who have not worked hard."
But isn't it wrong for people to suffer in a rich country?
(Excerpt) Read more at realclearpolitics.com ...
But look at all the toys we have! plasma TV, ipod, ipad,shiny new car, big house, and on and on./sarc
How about a Conservative Constitutionalist?
It hasn’t changed much now has it? I’ve said that libertarians would die of thirst by a lake if the cup didn’t suit them.
>>I wish there was a viable party somewhere between these two.<<
It is possible that the TEA party may become that party. It remains to be seen. We are in a leadership vacuum of historic proportions. Either someone will fill it or there will be kayos. Unfortunately, often the ones to fill it have names like Hitler, Pol Pot, Lenin, etc.
Immigration also has profound "neighbor effects", so even in the absence of a welfare state reasonable limits on immigration make sense.
Let them eat health care!
Nice read and so true. That is always the libtard’s argument: “It is inhumane to have the poor...”
Libertarians are Anarchists who bathe.
Before the election Obama was asked about raising taxes. The person made the point that tax revenues might actually decrease. Obamas response was that he'd do it anyway...to make things more fair.
Immigration was pretty open in the first half of the 20th century. Heck, my grandfather’s job before WWII was to carry truckloads of Mexicans to the fields in western Washington state. But there were no services for them to drain back then. We needed the labor and they were willing to provide it for a living wage.
My, how times have changed.
The war on drugs is the single largest infringment on our rights....no knock swat team raids have and will continue to deny people even the simple right to life ( there are many cases of wrong address raids where the homeowner was gunned down ) the biggest headline grabber was the 80 year old lady in atlanta, killed because a drug addict informer told the police there were drugs being sold at that house...the elimination of the drug laws would have a natural result of smaller government... I know of people (personally) who were arrested for less than a joint of pot, served jail time, years of probation and tens of thousands of dollars in fines and fees...for less than a joint...when the penalties for drug possession do more harm than the drug itself, it is upside down..Note: I do not do drugs, nor do I believe they have a place in society.
Absolutely correct. How government can help is by reducing our taxes, relaxing charitable deduction limits on our tax returns and by revoking the insane IRS requirement of needing a receipt for every penny we give. It only hurts the poor and others that are helped by charities.
They are an idiosyncratic bunch, aren’t they? LOL!
Imagine a sliding scale with government tyranny on the left and anarchy on the right.
We want to be as close to the anarchy end of the scale as we can possibly tolerate as a society. I didn’t say I want anarchy, but limited and very small non intrusive government would be on the anarchy end of the scale.
Government’s role is to not wipe, bathe and feed us, but to prevent persons from doing harm to one another. That is it. I don’t need a government mommy or daddy.
It’s way too much “anything goes” for my liking.
So libertarians are for open borders?
Yes, the classic libertarian position is that immigration laws are just another form of government intrusion into the lives of free people, so they usually support open borders, or something like it. I believe this was the (and may still be) the official party position of the Libertarian party. The Wall Street Journal, a pretty libertarian op-ed shop takes this view.
I recently saw Gov. Gary Johnson, a Republican who is often described as having libertarian positions, give a presentation. He doesn't say he favors open borders, but he says he would make it as easy as possible for immigrants to get paperwork allowing them to be here.
Libertarians put homo-economous, economic man, above all. In this way they are like Marxists. They down play or deny pretty much every other aspect of human existence - nationality, language, race. In the perfect Libertarian universe you have brave individual producers interacting as free men in a pure market system, with a tiny government acting as referee.
The libertarians generate many good ideas, but taken as a whole I find their philosophy reductionist and naive.
For instance, Alan Greenspan was a famous libertarian whose philosophy caused him to overlook the need for regulation of financial markets, as head of the Fed. It was his view that these markets would be "self governing".
He did admit to a fundamental error in his thinking after the crash.
I can imagine other libertarians admitting to fundamental errors in their thinking too, on things like drug legalization, and immigration, if they ever had a chance to implement these policies. Luckily, they probably won't.
Someone summon the Libertarian Ping List, please!
A classic example of the logical fallacy of "begging the question."
Libertarians are apparently supposed to be in favor of abortion because it doesn't "hurt anybody else."
Which is of course what the whole abortion debate is about. Pro-choice people believe abortion takes a human life, which is pretty inarguably hurting somebody else.
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