Posted on 12/22/2001 8:53:08 AM PST by rob777
Definitely not the same thing. No one wants to be the victim of robbery, fraud, assault, murder, etc. Thus if it is taken as a given that the state must treat all citizens equally, there is unanimous support for legal prohibition of, and punishment for these offenses. While the prohibitions are incorporated into virtually all religion's teachings, that is because they really are universal principles. They arise spontaneously in isolated communities, even absent any religious or governmental influence -- do away with the formal prohibitions and they pop up again almost immediately due to near-universal demand. Sure there are people who want to COMMIT these offenses, but even they don't want to be victims of them. Current conservative efforts to legislate their brand of morality, for example by campaigning for "defense of marriage" legislation and/or against same-sex marriage legislation, while preserving special legal privileges for people who organize their personal lives according to the religious precepts, are totally different. There, they ARE trying to impose religiously based moral precepts on unwilling people. They frequently make claims like "the institution of marriage would be threatened" if other people were allowed to marry differently, and then demand that government use its power to support this religiously based institution by decreeing that "you will marry this way or not at all, and the government will confer certain privileges on those who marry". The obvious corollary to this is that the institution does not have the overwhelming support of the people, and can only be maintained by government intervention (which I don't happen to believe -- only a handful of the flimsiest opposite-sex marriages would actually be weakened or ended by the advent of legal same-sex marriage).
That is the most illogical statement I have read since reading liberal trash. Size is a matter of being right? Maybe might is right?
Nope. Stitched to prevent them from fraying.
Truth be told, I'm not quite sure if my position on "open borders" is entirely consistent with the Libertarian Party's position. I would like to see quotaless immigration, but not without specific criteria. Most of all, I want a simultaneous rollback of government welfare so that those who come to America do so with the understanding that they will be responsible for making their own life according to their own effort and abilities.
Sure wish we could convince republicans and democrats of this. They give away OUR money like it was candy. And they think they're doing something noble.
So by your standard then, communism and socialism have passed the test of the "marketplace of ideas"?
Currently out of fashion in the mass market perhaps, but far from failed. Liberty and personal sovereignty is one of those timeless values that always manages to burst forth with a flourish when times seem the darkest.
Libertarianism is the Edsel of the free marketplace of ideas.
The Democrats are controlling personal behavior than the Republicans are. With the Democrats, they call their social engineering "targeted tax breaks", or "tolerance education"...it's not a short list. Liberals, as exemplified by the Democrats, are totalitarian by nature.
No, I said that prohibitions against easily produced substances which also cause relatively little harm in the grand scheme of things aren't practical or necessary.
Neither plutonium nor most hard drugs can be produced by their individual end-consumers, thus prohibiting them is a lot more practical. They are also MUCH more dangerous than things like marijuana or alcohol, thus justifying an exception to basic libertarian principles. A few hard drugs, such as meth, are pretty easy to produce and still extremely harmful, but the producers are not generally significant users (sort of self-regulating -- if one becomes a heavy user, one will shortly lose the capacity to produce). Most importantly, enforcement of laws against these more dangerous substances can be effective by focusing primarily on people who are producing and selling the substances for profit. With things like marijuana and alcohol, taking out the commercial producers and sellers simply results in most of the users taking up home production, therefore the prohibition accomplishes virtually nothing, unless we start to allow random searches of private homes.
Don't worry about a thing. Congress just voted a 5% pay raise for themselves. They "feel" they deserve it as "they" serve the American interest thwarting the Constitution.
How so?
And why did this Edsel condition come about?
And that means that it is a bad product or an ignorant consumer base?
Check the market share. 0.4% and falling.
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