Posted on 08/01/2002 3:27:45 PM PDT by Tomalak
Thought for the day
If you believe in a truly libertarian society, your only way to success is in working to build a society based upon traditional morality, shame and chastity. Contradictory? Actually, no. Given a little examination, it turns out to be rather obvious; almost self-evidently true. If you want to live in a country where every man supports himself rather than looking to the taxpayer, where crime is rare and so massive police powers, ID cards and DNA databases are superfluous, you will not do so on the back of the destructive policies of social liberalism.
Libertarians traditionally do not look to history for the sort of society they wish to build. But I sense that the famous passage with which AJP Taylor begins his English History 1914-1945 comes closest to the libertarian ideal: a place where the normal, sensible Englishman comes into contact with the state only through the post office and policeman. The United States that existed before FDR's massive extensions in state power is similarly the model of the sort of America that libertarians across the pond seek to build. What all successful societies in history with small states have had in common is a strictly moral populace. Victorian Britain could survive without a large state precisely because pious ideas of shame, duty and self-reliance ensured that people would look to themselves for what they needed, rather than the state, and because crime was low enough that the state did not need to seek all the powers it could summon to fight back.
One mistake far too many libertarians make is to associate traditional morality with big government, and hostility to freedom. The opposite is true. The more influence morality has over a man's conduct, the less need there is for the state to control it. Crime can be reduced by many police, many laws, tougher sentences and more guns. But most of all, to have a low crime society without an overbearing state, you need to fashion the sort of country whose people are inclined not to commit crime in the first place. Roger Scruton made this point as brilliantly as ever in his call to "Bring Back Stigma":
"The law combats crime not by eliminating criminal schemes but by increasing the risk attached to them; stigma combats crime by creating people who have no criminal schemes in the first place. The steady replacement of stigma by law, therefore, is a key cause of the constant increase in the number and severity of crimes."
To see morality as inimical to liberty, as a threat to libertarian ambitions, is the most statist thing one can do. It is to leave the state as the only thing to pick up the pieces when society fails to function.
It is no mere joke to say that at present libertarians are those who like the liberal society but hate paying for it. Take a recent column on paedophilia in America's leading Libertarian Magazine, Reason, entitled "Sins of the Fathers". Throughout the article, the message is clear: molesting kids is wrong, but 'merely' wanting to rape them is not. The article is a rebuke aimed at all those with a moral problem with lusting after children.
"The issue is not sexual attraction; it is sexual action...
Bibliophilia means the excessive love of books. It does not mean stealing books from libraries. Pedophilia means the excessive (sexual) love of children. It does not mean having sex with them, although that is what people generally have in mind when they use the term. Because children cannot legally consent to anything, an adult using a child as a sexual object is engaging in a wrongful act. Such an act is wrongful because it entails the use of physical coercion, the threat of such coercion, or (what comes to the same thing in a relationship between an adult and a child) the abuse of the adult’s status as a trusted authority.
Saying that a priest who takes sexual advantage of a child entrusted to his care "suffers from pedophilia" implies that there is something wrong with his sexual functioning, just as saying that he suffers from pernicious anemia implies that there something wrong with the functioning of his hematopoietic system. If that were the issue, it would be his problem, not ours."
I believe that the dominance such people seem to have over libertarianism is a source of much of its undeserved failure. Such arguments only make libertarians sound nasty, extreme, and frankly strange. They may explain their defence of paedophilia on the grounds of a philosophical tradition of 140 years standing, but most ordinary people do not see it that way: what they see is a political movement apparently sympathetic to a pervert. Similarly, attacking the welfare state on grounds of economic efficiency is productive before some, but to the majority, it just looks like greed: not wanting to help those in need. Unless one explains morally the evils of trapping people on welfare so that each time they make an economic advance there is a corresponding benefit cut, and of creating a state which appears to remove every citizen's private duty to others, how can one show that they are wrong to put this thinking down to greed?
So morality surely reduces the need for a large state. But does accepting the importance of morality in society mean a greater role for the state in other areas? I do not believe so. Let us look at the actual aims of social conservatives like Melanie Phillips, Peter Hitchens, Ann Widdecombe, Charles Moore, John Redwood, Roger Scruton and Theodore Dalrymple. How many can you name in mainstream journalism or politics who actually want to change the law to make homosexuality illegal, for example? I do not know of any. Again, we see the reality - the social "authoritarians" are not really authoritarian. They do not want new laws to stop immorality and crime: they want free people to choose to be good themselves. They want a country where virtue is praised and vice condemned.
Ultimately, the enemy of libertarians is state control, not self-control. Morality in ordinary life removes the need for the sort of huge state that politicians have built for us since the 1930s. The more people choose to be good of their own accord, the more convincingly one can question the need for an over-mighty government to keep them in line. But until libertarians give up their crusade against any idea of decent behaviour, I do not see them succeeding.
Considering I have spent entire evenings watching conservatives debate conservatives about the definition of a "real" conservative, I find your point rather superflous. I have asked posters on this thread to try not to insult each other, but to find common ground to help undo the federal behemoth. So far, conservative and libertarian posters have agreed that a federalist approach is something we can work together on. That there is merit to laws that deal with a harm threshhold (such as DUI), and not just actual harm itself - a significant alteration of hard-core libertarian thought, and one that puts it much closer to working with conservatives. This is good stuff. If that upsets you, sorry. I thought that FR, first and foremost, was a CONSTITUTIONAL RESTORATION website, and I stand with ANYONE who will help chip away at the federal behemoth. If you choose, you can find your own little band of merrymakers who agree with you 100 percent on your viewpoints. Guess what? You still won't accompish squat, as much as you like to decry the numbers of the LP. Successful politics is about alliances, about finding some level of common interest between groups, and then joining up and going out together and beating the crap out of the opposition. Not about ignoring similarities and harping on differences.
I know they make up a miserable 1/3rd of 1% of the voting population, so I figure there are NO LIBERTARIAN forums.
So friggin' what? For every big "L" libertarian, there are scores of posters on FR who adhere to some little "l" libertarian beliefs. People who harp on the big "L" also are failing to see the big picture...
An apt observation. However, with the decline in stigmatization for conduct that was once unacceptable, there is a decline in the moral character of the people. Of course that has little, if anything, to offer as a justification for more laws. The need is for a general awakening of the intelligent element, as to what works in human society--and what leads to certain disaster.
While the States have Police Powers to deal with anti-Social conduct that threatens Society, the Federal Government does not--outside the District and the Federal Reservations. So it is important to understand that not only can the Federal Government not correct the effects of the moral decline; its efforts to do so, other than by repealing unconstitutional laws--which of course it should do--can only cause more of a decline. As Reagan stated so well, the Federal Government is not the solution; the Federal Government is often the problem. (And see The Moral Bases of A Political Society.)
It is difficult to even imagine a more corrupting influence on the youth of America, than the image of a Government, which refuses to respect the limits on its own powers. Clintonesque liars, who escape retribution, set the worst possible example.
Your peaceful picture of American community life is also threatened today by the unholy combination of a half-baked immigration policy, combined with politically correct adulation for the concept of multi-culturalism and "diversity," which is not calculated to preserve much tranquility in our midst.
William Flax Return Of The Gods Web Site
IOW, morality is being responsible: voluntarily contraining your liberty in order to serve something other than your individual interests.
There's the rub, of course. How many times have we heard the libertarians on these threads claim that individual interests is all there are?
I would like to see the debate between Khepera and yourself, if Khepera comes back. I can see both points of view, you both are smart posters, let's see your respective points.
The 9th & 10th are still linked & valid. You are right about the purpose of the 9th, but it wasn't working after the civil war. Thus, the 14th was necessary to defend even the 2nd, among the others.
Read the ratification debates from 1868. Lots of good points defending gun rights, which were being violated by states.
For a politician or bureaucrat of that time having just witnessed the civil war wherein the citizens took up arms against one another and one side against the government, no doubt they were concerned. Visions in their head of, "but what if they ever join forces against the government (state of federal) and we can't pit one against the other? Damn, we better work to diminish the Second Amendment."
In the war of two worlds between the value creators and value destroyers I think the value destroyers prefer a gun war over a cyberspace/communication/information war. That is, they probably think they have more ammunition in pitting the military against the people where they have a greater chance of winning by brute force as opposed to not having a snowballs chance in hell of winning in fair/unbiased debate forums. This is an opportunity for a biased mainstream media to redeem itself.
Yes.
I've been trying to put that into words for quite a while. Thanks.
Which means the states will tell the feds to butt out.
. Look, dirtboy, I am pro-legalization. I'm attempting to illustrate some of the obstacles to it. What I've posted is much less theoretical than you might think.
And what I am posting is NOT theoretical, but is actually happening. I will leave it up to posters and lurkers which has more credence...
The libertarians defend property rights, the socialists do not. When it comes to personal behavior, however, they are more alike than different.
Libertarians--i.e. the Founding Fathers, and those who defend their vision--most certainly defend property rights. They also defend freedom of association--or non association. Socialists tell people not only what they must do with their property, but with whom they may associate; with whom they must go to school; even what values they are free to express in public discussion (such as the interdiction, now, of prayers in school assemblies and commencements). The traditional American libertarian outlook is totally different than the Socialist, both as to what is moral, and who has the right to define morality.
If you were to look only at what some Hollywood socialist said about say, sexual promiscuity, drugs, homosexuality, or what have you ... and then you looked at a libertarian's comment on the same, you wouldn't find any significant difference.
Now here, you are referring to a small group of "Libertarians," who have adopted the term to offer an alternative political party. However, the items you lump together do not have equal values or importance to all people who vote for that still fragmentary party. (I happen to believe that it would be a very good thing for us Conservative Republicans, if the party were to become more significant; able to exercise leverage to help force the mainstream parties to the Right.)
But what you list here, sexual promiscuity, drugs and homosexuality, are only a very few of the many areas in which modern Socialist leaning Governments try to legislate values. And the issue is hardly one in which most Conservatives are on an opposite tack with even the small group of libertarians, actually active in the new party. On Homosexuality, I will grant you, I part company with the Libertarians. Why? Because Conservative, traditional American Governments always interdicted such behavior. To sanction it is to tear down a long established Conservative position.
Do not mistake, what I am suggesting. Traditional America respected doors, also. And behavior which was not inflicted upon the public, between consenting adults, who respected the sensibilities of their neighbors, ordinarily went unremarked. On the other hand, those who flaunt deviant behavior should be punished--at the least by the stigmatization, discussed repeatedly in this thread.
With regard to drugs and sexual promiscuity, the answers are not so clear. Traditional America relied purely on stigmatization to control sexual behavior and substance abuse. It was only as we came into the 20th Century, that Liberals, Moderates & even some Conservatives, got the Government into trying to deal with the social consequences of these.
Hollywood does not represent a Socialist position in its self-indulgent permissiveness; rather just that, self-indulgent permissiveness. Again, the remedy to Hollywood, is societal condemnation of their lack of character; with outright condemnation, necessary, for the anti-social values they promote in movies. The Southern Baptist attack on Disney should have been echoed by every responsible leader of every socially perceptive organizaton in America. But that has nothing to do with any imagined schism between Conservatives and Libertarians.
William Flax Return Of The Gods Web Site
Oh, puh-leeze. You are entitled to you opinion, but if you are gonna try and make a historical statement, please try to reconcile it with actual historical fact...
I just looked over my last post #150, and realized that the above could easily be misconstrued. Obviously the sexual behavior that society conrolled by stigmatization was promiscuity. We did not control rape by stigmatization, of course. Indeed, in the more Conservative America of yester-year; rape could lead to an early death, or treatment which might make the rapist wish he were dead.
The point is, that in repressing what we do not like, the traditional--that is the Conservative--approach, is not a uniform reliance on one form of dissuasion. But in understanding what is in fact the Conservative approach, you need to refer to those different forms of dissuasion. You cannot say that because we hung rapists, we should therefore jail anybody who has an affair. When you start extending the traditional role of Government, then you violate the most sacred of Conservative principles, including legitimacy, predictability, and personal honor and responsibility.
To the Conservative, the end never justifies the means.
William Flax Return Of The Gods Web Site
It's kinda subtle, but let me try. I think we would agree that, prior to the 14th Amendment, the 9th and 10th stood together as a cast iron fence around the federal government, but the Bill of Rights had little to no bearing on the states.
'No bearing' due to Marshalls erroneous ruling in Marbery v Madison, which the 14th made mute.
The first eight amendments define legal rights of individuals, and the 9th and 10th define limitations on the federal government.
I refered to "powers prohibited to the states" - in the 10th, - and much more, --- at the beginning of post 122, the very post you are responding to here.
Now, the 14th is passed. OK, amendments 1 thru 8 of the BofR now apply to the states.
They always did, imo. But the point is mute. See above.
But what about the 9th?
ALL the amendments applied to the states after the 14th was ratified. The 9th & 10th weren't exempt. Why would you think this so?
Does an amendment that is meant as a constraint on federal power still apply when joined to the 14th, which extends federal power? That is the contradiction, IMO.
The 14th extends *constitutional* power, not federal.
Big difference. The feds are still bound by ALL of the constitution, including the 14th itself.
The one reference to the 9th by SCOTUS in recent history, in the Griswald decision, was an effort by liberal justices to justify creating a new federal right under the 9th and imposing it on the states via the 14th. I don't think that you or I wanna go there...
The states have the option of fighting Griswald further, and have not. Its a political decision that shows a weakness in politics, not in the constitution.
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We discussed DUI just the other day. I agreed it is a legal use of the police power of states, if used with extreme caution for violations of due process.
And the devil is in them thar details. But the feds have been the ones pushing the DUI envelope, most recently by mandating a drop in the legal limit from .1 to .08. So I think such "harm threshhold" laws, for lack of a better term, are better off at the state level.
My point above exactly. The states should be fighting the feds in court on their unconstitutional power grabs. Such 'checks & balances' aren't working because of our corrupted party politics political system.
The evidence is reasonably convincing that the relaxation of the stigma of sexual promiscuity, and the consequences thereof, is more than just a rejection of a set of meaningless prudery. If you look at it, sexual promiscuity has been among the primary drivers for the growth of the nanny state.
There is good evidence to suggest that bastardy has more far-reaching effects than merely the lack of an inheritance, or ending up poor on welfare. It also leads to bad behavior of the sort that causes legislators to pass laws against guns, or to declare a "War on Drugs."
(One may safely assume that few of the nice boys who killed those two guys in Chicago has ever known their fathers in any familial sense. It's certainly true of a very high percentage of the prison population.)
One might well consider divorce to be a more subtle form of promiscuity -- and that has its own set of ill-effects on society.
Sexual promiscuity doesn't explain everything, of course. But it explains a lot.
How exactly do you propose that the 10th Amendment be applied to the states via the 14th? That is the crux of the matter...
In the sense that you are speaking of, you and I are in virtually complete agreement. This is certainly not an issue though between Conservatives and Libertarians. The ADC program deliberately undermined the American family; deliberately financed an increase in the population among the least employable, the least educable. The toll on our institutions, which has resulted from deliberately subsidizing having children out of wedlock, has already been staggering. (See How The Welfare State Works!)
It is noteworthy that not only did the Feds subsidize bastard births. A key part of the program was a stricture against local Welfare agencies continuing any stigma, at all, for such conduct. They deliberately outlawed the normal way Society instinctively protects itself!
William Flax Return Of The Gods Web Site
I will hold to my original point. How can an amendment that moves powers not delegated to the federal government to the states or the people ... be affected by an amendment that grants more power to the federal government at the expense of the states? Hint - it is diminished. And since the 9th was originally coupled to the 10th (IMO), that in turn diminishes the 9th, or else the 9th, coupled with the 14th, becomes a vehicle for federal judicial activism instead of a check on federal judicial and legislative power, as the 9th was prior to the passage of the 14th.
The state of Nevada is the proper 'role model', imo.
In Nevada, prostitution being decriminalized or not illegal (however you want to reference it) has not caused society and the individuals that form it to run headlong into destruction. Yet as soon as a person steps into another state, say for example Arizona, politicians and bureaucrats in Arizona proclaim that they protect the little guy from prostitution that would surely run society headlong into destruction if it were legal.
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