LOL. You've got to be kidding me. "Losertarians are worse than the French". Losertarians?
The fact is libertarianism has more in common with true conservatism then people on this board apparently think. Reagan certainly thought so.
And yet there are so many conservatives that hate libertarians. As somebody who considers himself between conservative and libertarian, I can't fathom why.
Honestly, it's usually the conservatives who aren't really conservative at all in terms of economics that hate the libertarians. The RINOs. The neo-cons. Can't stand to be soundly defeated in economic debate, they run to 'other' conservatives and bash libertarians because "they're not like us! See! They have a different name!"
Reagan, like the Framers of America's founding documents, was a Christian Libertarian.
He, and they, advocated self-government according to the biblical 'Law of Love', ie: "Love does no harm to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfillment of the law." [Rom.13:10]
And of course The Framers agreed with the biblical definiton of what constitutes harm to one's neighbor. We have laws against murder, theft, fraud, (marriage is a contract so adultery is fraud, by the way), etc., etc. [Rom.13:9]
So, if there is to be a decent, orderly society where the citizens don't harm one another, people have two choices:
[1] They will be free because they are self-controlled. They choose to be law-abiding. ( INTERNALLY controlled).
[2] They will be lawless. A relativist, a libertine, and an anarchist -- each want to determine for himself what he thinks the definition of love is and what the definition of harm is. Of course those who insist on being a law unto themselves will necessarily have to be externally controlled when they violate the only standard we go by and thus harm their neighbor.
Captain Rabbit: "And yet there are so many conservatives that hate libertarians. As somebody who considers himself between conservative and libertarian, I can't fathom why."
Conservatives and Christian libertarians are one and the same in their basic worldview.
It is not possible to be a conservative and be a relativist (whose ethics have no unchanging standard, but are instead situational). And, of course no conservative could at the same time be a libertine or an anarchist, either --- for the same reason.
"This country was founded on the principle that the American people would be self-governing! Those who wrote the Constitution clearly recognized (and stated openly) the self government applied to the INDIVIDUAL more than it did to the government.
It was pointed out that the Constitution was only suitable to govern a moral people and was wholly inadequate to rule those who were not self governed by a universally recognized moral code.
Long before the Constitution came into existence, William Pitt who was involved in the establishment of Pennsylvania stated:
"Those who will not be ruled by God [self-governed], WILL be ruled by tyrants!"
Our enemies, again mostly domestic, have long recognized and acted upon that knowledge and have been doing everything in their power to destroy what was once the crowning achievement of the Judeo-Christian belief system: the United States of America." ~ Albert Burns
Because libertarians leave out the most important part of the freedom equation that our founding fathers wrote so much about.....morality. Without our self imposed Judeo-Christian morality holding society together and keeping us from preying on each other, we in turn are able to be a free people. When we loose that morality society becomes dangerous and the stronger prey on the weaker in turn government must impose its demands on the society of proper behavior more and more and in the end the cost is our freedom.
Conservative contempt of libertarians is well deserved!
—Patrick Henry
“God who gave us life gave us liberty. And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure if we have removed their only firm basis: a conviction in the minds of men that these liberties are the gift of God?”
—Thomas Jefferson
“We have staked the future of all of our political institutions upon the capacity of mankind for self-government, upon the capacity of each and all of us ... to sustain ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God.”
—James Madison