Posted on 01/12/2012 4:55:31 AM PST by SeekAndFind
Throughout the primary election season there's been a group unfairly villainized by the rest of the Republicans. Not the establishment (they can't be villainized enough for giving us McCain and trying to keep folks like Rand Paul from getting elected in 2010) -- I mean libertarians.
Republicans like to villainize libertarians for infiltrating their party -- but refuse to acknowledge that being libertarian and being Republican are not mutually exclusive. I wish someone had told me, but apparently all self-identified libertarians are the same caricature of Ron Paul supporters who refuses to debate and instead just shouts "Neo-con! Neo-con!" at everyone with whom he disagrees.
I'm not what you'd call a "Ron Paul libertarian"; I don't think he's the end-all, be-all personification of what a libertarian is or what libertarians must believe to fit the title. Love him or hate him -- which seem to be the only two options -- I'd like to believe that everyone on the right can admit that Ron Paul has brought the mainstream of the far right a little closer to libertarian beliefs. Without Ron Paul, you wouldn't have candidates like Rick Perry and Rick Santorum pushing for trillions of dollars in spending cuts, nor would they be promising to outright eliminate regulatory agencies. When I "came out" as a black conservative, I had to explain ad nauseam how the two were not mutually exclusive. I'm finding myself having to make the same point over and over with regards to libertarianism -- that the most vocal members of a given group do not speak for the whole. There is as much diversity of thought between fellow libertarians as there is in the Republican Party. While I self-identify as a conservative libertarian, many people react to that label as though I cannot be both simultaneously.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
Oh no doubt that after they raped, pillaged and plundered they would have fallen apart - eventually. Would it have happened as fast if cold warriors hadn't stood gurard by the door and taken them on like Reagan? Possibly not. Who can say for sure. I wouldn't want to be part of the raped, pillaged or plundered sitting there waiting for it to happen.
Follow up questions: What's the libertarian thinking on American "territories"? Should the union of States protect American territories? Should the union of States even have territories? Aren't they basically froward operation bases? If the fleet had been at San Diego instead of Pearl, Japan might not have been threatened and not bothered to attack. They might have just moved in and taken it. Just wonderin'.
Stay armed, stay free, my friend.
So I guess after the Fall of Berlin we should have just dumped a bunch of guns and a copy of OUR Constitution and said, see ya suckahs! We’ll be back when you declare war on us again. :-)
Libertarian belief might be exactly what we need right now, whether large or small L. We need stronger medicine that what the mainstream Republican candidates are offering, which is more of the same-old tweaking.
Both major parties are obviously reading from the same hymnal. The Dems want to drive us off the big government cliff at top speed, while the GOP prefers to follow the speed limit. The finish line is the same for both. Maybe we need some whacko right-wing thinking right about now, to get us going in the right direction, which CAN’T be worse than our current direction!
— On a related note —
Abortion should be a state issue, not a federal one. Let the states decide. The same goes for drugs, gambling, prostitution and assorted “victimless” crimes. If the feds want to experiment in D.C., let them, but leave the states alone.
The states can decide if they want to outlaw any of the above and accept the associated costs. (And don’t worry — if drugs were decriminalized at the federal level, the states would still maintain their current laws.)
The War On Drugs has been an abysmal failure and waging it further benefits only the police unions and ... oddly enough ... the drug dealers by artificially raising the price of their products. We The People don’t benefit, because the drugs are easily available on the street right now, and always have been.
Think of it this way: You don’t want your kid messed up on drugs. Lectures, punishments, education and prayers are all you can provide. Really, that’s all you can do. Teach them and hope they’ll be smart enough to say no.
But as of right now, thanks to the War On Drugs, his life can be messed up both by drugs AND an arrest record for drugs.
Who benefits from that?
Works for me.
This does not prevent you, for instance, from donating money or your time or efforts to an international cause you feel is just or moral. Nor does it prevent our nation from building or maintaining a strong military that allows us to project our power internationally if need be and stomp our military enemies into oblivion.
If that's "sad" in your opinion, so be it.
Calling social conservatives liberals that don’t like abortion, no difference, is absurd.
Social liberals overwhelmingly vote democrat and liberal, social conservatives overwhelmingly vote republican and conservative, in fact they are the back bone of conservatism and the portion of the electorate which moderate republicans and the American left have the worst problem with.
Things don’t change much for the Libertarian Party, here is the 1990 Libertarian Party Platform on immigration and the 2004 Libertarian Party Platform on immigration.
17. IMMIGRATION, 1990 Party Platform:
We hold that human rights should not be denied or abridged on the basis of nationality. We condemn massive roundups of Hispanic Americans and others by the federal government in its hunt for individuals not possessing required government documents. We strongly oppose all measures that punish employers who hire undocumented workers. Such measures repress free enterprise, harass workers, and systematically discourage employers from hiring Hispanics.
Undocumented non-citizens should not be denied the fundamental freedom to labor and to move about unmolested. Furthermore, immigration must not be restricted for reasons of race, religion, political creed, age, or sexual preference.
We therefore call for the elimination of all restrictions on immigration, the abolition of the Immigration and Naturalization Service and the Border Patrol, and a declaration of full amnesty for all people who have entered the country illegally. We oppose government welfare payments to non-citizens just as we oppose government welfare payments to all other persons.
Because we support the right of workers to cross borders without harassment, we oppose all government-mandated “temporary worker” plans. Specifically, we condemn attempts to revive the Bracero Program as government imposition of second-class status on Mexican-born workers.
We welcome all refugees to our shores and condemn the efforts of U.S. officials to create a new “Berlin Wall” which would keep them captive. We condemn the U.S. government’s policy of barring those refugees from our shores and preventing Americans from assisting their passage to help them escape tyranny or improve their economic prospects.
Immigration, 2004 Party Platform:
The Issue: We welcome all refugees to our country and condemn the efforts of U.S. officials to create a new “Berlin Wall” which would keep them captive. We condemn the U.S. government’s policy of barring those refugees from our country and preventing Americans from assisting their passage to help them escape tyranny or improve their economic prospects.
The Principle: We hold that human rights should not be denied or abridged on the basis of nationality. Undocumented non-citizens should not be denied the fundamental freedom to labor and to move about unmolested. Furthermore, immigration must not be restricted for reasons of race, religion, political creed, age or sexual preference. We oppose government welfare and resettlement payments to non-citizens just as we oppose government welfare payments to all other persons.
Solutions: We condemn massive roundups of Hispanic Americans and others by the federal government in its hunt for individuals not possessing required government documents. We strongly oppose all measures that punish employers who hire undocumented workers. Such measures repress free enterprise, harass workers, and systematically discourage employers from hiring Hispanics.
Transitional Action: We call for the elimination of all restrictions on immigration, the abolition of the Immigration and Naturalization Service and the Border Patrol, and a declaration of full amnesty for all people who have entered the country illegally.
It's no less absurd than saying that libertarians are just liberals that like guns, which is what started that exchange.
Goose, gander, sauce. I say we call out both of them.
Except it is true about social liberals.
You don’t know that social liberals are the back bone of liberalism, of the voters for the Democrat party and it’s agenda?
You don’t know that social conservatives are the back bone of conservatism, and the right?
No, I don’t know that. I have seen the assertion (and with it the assertions implicit in replacing “libertarian” with “social liberal”), but have not seen any proof. Just a lot of noise and chest thumping about it, as if saying it often enough makes it true.
You don’t know about the religious divide between liberalism and conservatism, as in the more religious someone is, the more likely they vote Republican, and the less religious, or non-religious, the more likely they are to vote Democrat?
I’ve seen the chart. If you’re defining “social conservative” as somebody that goes to church, and submit that they are the “backbone of conservativism”, then according to that chart somewhere between 18 and 50 percent of our backbone is attempting to sever our spinal chord.
The more religious, the more conservative. Social conservatives are the ones that show up and vote overwhelmingly conservative.
Social liberals and the anti-God people are the exact opposite, we get a few of them, but they support liberalism by a HUGE majority, even the few that we get are generally fighting to move us to the left on many issues.
What's wrong with just saying "the more conservative, the more conservative"? Conservativism is a measure in it's own right. Why not use it?
Are you wanting your religousity to grant you some special status?
To say the more conservative the more conservative is silly.
I was trying to get you to realize how absurd it is for you to not know that social conservatives are overwhelmingly conservatives, almost entirely, and that social liberals are overwhelmingly liberals of course, and they vote accordingly.
It is ridiculous for a fringe/partly conservative to attack the very people that make up the conservative base.
It is nice that you are one of the anti-social conservatives to vote with us, but even so, here you are attacking conservatism from within.
I know about Alinsky's methods of using insults and ridicule against people who disagree with you, along with a repetitive drumbeat of soundbites and slogans instead of common, civil discussion.
According to your own data, even among the most religious people surveyed about 1 in 5 voted for Obama. How do I know you'r not one of them?
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