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Given the choice, I’d rather have the Judeo-Christian morality enforced by a moral government, like we had for at least a couple hundred years, than moral relativism. That will only result in anarchy, as everyone does what’s right in his own eyes. That’s what I fear the libertarian movement will lead.

Libertarians are strongly in favor of limited government, and so am I. But you must have some government or you do get anarchy. Sometimes I wonder, though, whether in some libertarian quarters the desire for limited government is related to the same desire to get "quit" of God: To obtain for man absolutely unlimited freedom to do whatever he wants without moral constraints being imposed on him "from the outside."

But such a desire is nutz to me; it represents a total flight from reality.... It also is a repudiation of essential human nature...which ab ovo necessarily has a social dimension.

The fact is unrestrained individuality -- that is, a focus on the individual without regard to his participation in (and obligations to) the wider civil society -- can easily lead to anarchy. We've recently been chatting on another thread about Niels Bohr's complementarity principle, which states that two seemingly mutually-exclusive things can often be complementary and shed light on each other, that one is not necessarily "right" at the expense of the other being "wrong." It seems to me the federal Constitution ever seeks to justly reconcile a fundamental complementarity:

Early in the eighteenth century a philosophical statesman, the Marquess of Halifax, had seen a duality in the object of constitutional law to keep the balance "between the excess of unbounded power and the extravagance of liberty not enough restrained." -- R. V. Jones, in Niels Bohr: A Centenary Volume, 1985

Finding that balance has been the great distinction and achievement of American political order. The difficulty -- the challenge -- is to maintain that proper balance....

Thank you so much for writing, metmom!

The fact is unrestrained individuality -- that is, a focus on the individual without regard to his participation in (and obligations to) the wider civil society -- can easily lead to anarchy.

That's the issue that keeps coming up on other threads when I run into libertarians.

For example, they argue that a man's home is his castle and he has a right to live how he pleases, which I agree with to some extent. But the problem is that the cases that are being discussed are issues where the guy is living in a filthy pigsty, has rats living in the house and running the neighborhood, trash overflows and the stench can be smelled down the street.

Following their line of reasoning, I also have a right to live in a clean pest free environment. So who's rights win? They usually side with the slob. It doesn't matter if he's inflicting his lifestyle on everyone else, they just have to put up and shut up.

But under a true libertarian society, couldn't any one of the neighbors be justified in blowing the guy away under the same, I'll live as I please and nobody can stop me mentality?

Anarchy indeed.