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To: zoyd
Because the author is a complete idiot that wouldn't know a monarchist from a marxist. Libertarians are not opposed to public courts, armies, police forces and many are lukewarm to the idea of public schools too. Libertarians are against big government in virtually any area. A libertarian public school system would look a lot like college, not day care. Your kid goes and gets the fundamentals, learns a trade or goes on to a real university. A libertarian police force would be a group of peace officers, not "foot soldiers in a war on crime." Imagine British police with side arms, but not M-16s in their arsenal. A libertarian army would be composed of volunteers and be by law not allowed to be deployed beyond our terroritory without a declaration of war thus preventing our ability to conduct "police actions."

Where libertarians and conservatives disagree primarily is that libertarians believe that virtually nothing can be done by the state without harming someone directly or indirectly. Libertarians tend to oppose almost all zoning regulations for example. Libertarians want a 100% secular state, but one that places no restriction on freedom of religion. I am mostly a libertarian so on that I can say that we do not support any taxation period on churches and any business they run should be treated like any other business. We have no problems with non-coercive public prayers including students praying privately in classrooms so long as the teacher does not initiate it because that scares the other students into thinking that if they don't join in their grades will be affected. After school, let the teacher direct prayers with willing students as long as they and the parents want to.

The personal freedom area we differ the most is that we place virtually no value on "morality" that exists only because of a coercive state. For example banning Cradle of Filth's music is pointless, it is an intrusion into their right to freely express himself and it won't make their followers moral. They have chosen to be immoral and their choice of music reflects that. In case you are wondering, CoF is a blatantly satanic rock band. It doesn't sing about depravity like Manson does (IIRC he is an atheist, not satanist) they glorify satanism in their music. Essentially where we differ is that we realize that coercion alone is incapable of changing them. You can put a gun to their heads and they will only "give it up" in order to not be killed, but their minds won't have changed for the better. In fact you will probably have made them more determined in their belief that they are right and you are wrong.

6 posted on 05/19/2002 4:50:25 PM PDT by dheretic
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To: dheretic
This essay is just another by-the-numbers "all libertarians are really anarchists, so we don't have to take them seriously" polemic. Ignorable. Anyone who is seriously interested in political debate & analysis doesn't need to read this kind of trivializing of issues.
7 posted on 05/19/2002 5:17:38 PM PDT by Anotherpundit
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