Libertarian ping! To be added or removed from my ping list freepmail me or post a message here.
Posted on 10/19/2007 10:17:48 AM PDT by Eric Blair 2084
To oversimplify: Democrats are for Big Government; Republicans are against it.
To oversimplify somewhat less, Democrats aren't always for Big Government, and Republicans aren't always against it. Democrats treasure civil liberties, whereas Republicans are more tolerant of government censorship to protect children from pornography, or of wiretapping to catch a criminal, or of torture in the war against terrorism. War in general and Iraq in particular--certainly Big Government exercises--are projects Republicans tend to be more enthusiastic about. Likewise the criminal process: Republicans tend to want to make more things illegal and to send more people to jail for longer. Republicans also consider themselves more concerned about the moral tone of the country, and they are more disposed toward using the government in trying to improve it. In particular, Republicans think religion needs more help from society, through the government, while Democrats are touchier about the separation of church and state.
Many people feel that neither party offers a coherent set of principles that they can agree with. For them, the choice is whether you believe in Big Government or you don't. And if you don't, you call yourself a libertarian. Libertarians are against government in all its manifestations. Domestically, they are against social-welfare programs. They favor self-reliance (as they see it) over Big Government spending.
(Excerpt) Read more at time.com ...
Liberals favor civil liberties for those that the authoritarian central command have decided in their infinite wisdom deserve civil liberties. Everyone else who doesn't advance their goal of a Socialist Utopia (corporations, anti collectivists, polluters, unborn children, churces, smokers) get none.
Liberals favor civil liberties for those that the authoritarian central command have decided in their infinite wisdom deserve civil liberties. Everyone else who doesn't advance their goal of a Socialist Utopia (corporations, anti collectivists, polluters, unborn children, churces, smokers) get none.
How about this...everyone on the thread FReepmails the others a keyword. The object of the game is to get a Statist to use that word. If they do, everybody else drinks.
For example, if my word is “loserdopian”, I need to goad someone into using that term.
Not only is it allowed, it's encouraged. That was Frank Meyer and the other leaders of the conservative movement's grand plan 50 years ago. Socialism is a threat to libertarians who value personal freedom and social conservatives who value moral order.
Were you intending to aim that reply at me? I believe you basically posted the same viewpoint that I did...
That's a dammed good idea! Of course, if we used the criteria of your first post in this thread as a trigger for a drink we would be drunk in just a few minutes
See post 63 for my idea.
You can be. But to do so you must hold the view of the government the Framers did. The Constitution dealt with the federal government and the separate and sovereign states had the rights to legislate morality, if absolutely needed, at the state level as their citizens saw best. This would include laws on murder, abortion, death penalty, etc.
I don’t see murder or abortion (same thing) as legislating morality. Gubmints legitimate function is to protect our rights to “life, liberty” expressly stated in the Constitution.
The other stuff like social engineering, wealth redistribution, and real legislation of morality (ie, making dildos illegal) is not a legitimate governemnt function.
Wrong, pencil neck (Michael Kinsley, not you Eric). Democrats are increasingly fascist in their policies, hiding it behind the guise of being civil libertarians.
Republicans tend to want to make more things illegal and to send more people to jail for longer.
Ibid, see above. Want examples? Smoking laws, seatbelt laws, gun laws, yada, yada, yada.
communitarians emphasize society rather than the individual and believe that group responsibilities (to family, community, nation, the globe) should trump individual rights.
In other words, the new word for Communists.
Republicans have a clearer vision of what constitutes a good society and a well-run planet and are quicker to try to impose this vision on the rest of us.
NO, Mr. Kinsley, you GD IDIOT!!! DEMOCRATS do this! My God is the man really this blind, or is he just stupid?
Very few Democrats self-identify as libertarians, but they are in fact much more likely to have a live-and-let-live attitude toward the lesbian couple next door or the Islamofascist dictator halfway around the world.
That live and let live attitude toward that Islamofascist dictator will eventually get a bunch of them killed.
Sure, Democrats and Libertarians are birds of a feather. And over at DU, they claim the Libertarian vote as theirs, and wonder how they can ever lose since they have the Libertarians.
And then they pound the p!$$ out of anyone on DU who actually posts a libertarian treatise and ban them. Democrats are psychotic. Just psychotic.
Haha great idea!
Check your FR Mail.
Are the folks at DU really dumb enough to think that? Just because liberals fight for the rights of homosexuals, for example, and some angry retarded folks who call themselves conservatives hate homosexuals they think libertarians would be in their corner? They would would sign up for socialism and collectivism? Please...
You might like this article from the American Spectator. It’s probably worthy of it’s own thread.
http://www.amspec.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=12176
The Liberaltarian Delusion
By Garin K. Hovannisian
Published 10/17/2007
Last December, the New Republic hosted the unlikely marriage of liberalism and libertarianism. Cato Institute scholar Brink Lindsey presided over the “liberaltarian” wedding, a union rooted in “philosophical commitment to individual autonomy as a core political value.”
It would be easy to dismiss Lindsey’s article as the ideological equivalent of a midlife crisis, but it appeared in the context of a larger “Libertarian Democrat” meme embraced by some libertarians and liberals alike. The idea was that liberalism would provide a happier home to freedom-lovers and that Democrats could actually behave in ways that enhance liberty.
How is the happy couple faring? A month after Lindsey’s piece appeared, the honeymoon was already over. The liberal-led Democratic Congress quickly rescinded its promises of fiscal responsibility, outspending the Bush administration by $20 billion even on the Iraq war supplemental. In violation of free-market principles, Democrats boosted the federal minimum wage by 70 cents. And to cover the bill of greater government spending, their budget blueprints authorized a $721 billion tax increase over the next five years.
Congressional Democrats have continued their advocacy of government dependency. Most notably, they passed a $35 billion comprehensive expansion of the State Children’s Health Insurance Fund into a full-fledged, permanent program. Benchmarks of eligibility were relaxed to cover anyone within 350 percent of the poverty line, with waivers for those earning up to 400 percent.
At the state level, things are just as bad. Lindsey’s own Cato Institute rates gives low grades to Western governors hyped as “libertarian Democrats.” New Mexico’s Bill Richardson scores best with a C. Montana’s Brian Schweitzer and Wyoming’s Dave Freudenthal both receive F’s.
Nowhere do we see greater flexibility toward free markets or new openness toward smaller government. Once entrusted with political power, liberals are more likely to swell budgets and issue regulations than fight perceived infringements on civil liberties.
The Democratic presidential candidates don’t promise to be any more liberaltarian than their colleagues already in office. They all pledge to roll back the Bush tax cuts and enlarge the federal government’s role in healthcare. And their rhetoric is decidedly anti-free-market.
On her campaign website, Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton complains: “Corporate profits are up. CEO pay is up. Wages are lagging. Household debt is soaring. At the same time, health care, energy, and education costs are rising.” In other words, the free market has failed. And for all these problems, there is a government solution.
John Edwards promises “a specific plan for truly universal health care that will take on the insurance and drug companies, cover every man, woman, and child in America, and get better care at lower cost.” Bill Richardson calls for an “energy and climate revolution,” which includes state-controlled efforts to cut demand for oil, reduce greenhouse emissions, and support “mandatory world-wide limits on global warming pollution.” Meanwhile, Barack Obama pledges to further increase the minimum wage, subsidize transitional jobs, and pour more money into education.
Even on the most fundamental libertarian issue — free trade — the Democrats are exactly wrong. Gone is the enthusiasm for NAFTA and GATT that characterized Bill Clinton’s administration. Instead, Edwards has vowed “smarter trade that puts workers first.” And the whole pageant has become an echo chamber of globalization’s lament.
The new protectionism is based on the idea that it takes a village to promote economic growth, rather than the free movement of goods and people. Hillary Clinton has announced, “The unfettered free market has been the most radically destructive force in American life in the last generation.”
Regrettably, conflicts over healthcare, social security, and trade are not incidental or passing. They are calculated expressions of two distinct worldviews. The liberal view, bemoaning market outcomes, resorts to government. The libertarian view, skeptical of state power, endorses markets.
The recent Republican spending binge, accompanied by disagreements over war and civil liberties, may account for the libertarian’s wandering eye. But far from being an improvement over the conservative-libertarian fusionist alliance, the liberaltarian marriage is already on the rocks. But already in the first few months of their new marriage, it must be clear that libertarianism and liberalism are having irreconcilable differences.
Garin K Hovannisian is a student at Columbia University’s School of Journalism and blogs at LuckyFrown.com.
Libertarian ping! To be added or removed from my ping list freepmail me or post a message here.
ping
“Libertarians are overrated. They have a disproportionate influence on the internet, but aren’t much of a factor in real life”
you need to read the news other then FR. on digg the libertarians are the only thing hold back the left from an all out communist uprising. the republicans have LOST their street cred in regards to smaller government. the libertarians are the only ones left to the war of ideas.
a new revolution is coming and the days of big government republicans is coming to an end.
But what about “Compassionate Conservatism”?
“When people hurt the Gubmint should act”-—President George W. Bush.
What about the illegal aliens who are forced to live in the shadows because they broke our laws?
How about the biggest expansion of the welfare State since LBJ’s great society with the Medicare Part D program?
The libertarians in the GOP are becoming scarce. I can think of Pence, Tancredo, Hunter, Paul (sorry Paul haters).
Other than that, it’s an orgy of Socialism Light.
I think you forgot your sarcasm tag. I don't mean to nitpick, but people might end up thinking you actually believe all of this nonsense if you don't include one.
Amen, brother (or sister, as the case may be).
I believe it was either Chesterton or C.S. Lewis who said no one is going to be dragged into heaven, kicking and screaming.
I am a conservative Christian and a libertarian. Go figure. ;-)
Yes. I do agree with what you posted. You made a good post.
Just wanted to expound on why technically and economically socialism didn’t doesn’t work.
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