As you see here, hearty libertarianism has quite a grip on the fevered minds of many American conservatives.
I, too, am nostalgic for those days when this was a rural country and the government didn't need to do too much more than deliver the mail and hang the occasional pirate. I used to let the independent and self-sufficient spirit of those long-gone days inform my attitudes about how modern government should operate. Unlike most of our companions here, I let go of all that coonskin cap stuff and got serious.
It seems obvious to me that the complexity, the density, and the interdependence of modern life means that our lives must be much more regulated. I worry that often it is someone like Hillary trying to do the regulating and do what I can to elect "regulators" with some sense. I also agree that there are plenty of cops out there who do not deserve their badges and who, themselves, are a menace to public safety and convenience. The solution seems to me to upgrade that profession and hold them more strictly accountable.
Although I live in a good urban area, street crime is a serious reality. I no longer feel safe to go out to a grocery store late at night as I once did. And there are some busy roads in my community -- not in bad areas, just busy with a lot of commercial development -- which I try to avoid completely on Friday and Saturday nights. There are wildly speeding drivers, running red lights and behaving generally aggressively...much, much more so than a decade or two ago. Many of them, I am sure, are drinking or taking drugs. Many are carrying weapons. Many are unlicensed and uninsured. I am not a bit ashamed to say that I'd like it cleaned up. A right to privacy on the road does not mean much to me if I more and more find myself reluctant to use those roads.
We Americans are not that far from our colonial roots and, living in the woods aside, we were a rowdy and independent lot from the start. That's how we happened to be here. And the West has been a continual frontier. There is still open country where you can sit on your porch and shoot at squirrels as one ranter earlier today was wanting to do. But that kind of life is something for the marginal few. For most of us, who live urban lives, it is time to let go of some of this woodsy independence. And, yea, I am also for banning Pit Bulls, the favored pet of hardcore libertarians who have no concept of responsible life in an urban community.
You see, there's a problem with that. In this country, everyone has the legal right to drive.
It started getting touchy when they stopped exercising it.