Posted on 08/21/2007 11:41:49 AM PDT by DesScorp
I just recently caught up with the exchange on conservatism and the culture wars between Brink Lindsey and Ramesh Ponnuru, in which Lindsey exhorts conservatives to give up any further efforts in the culture war, which he deems finished. And I also heard some of a Cato Institute talk that featured Lindsey and David Brooks, who agrees with Lindsey on this point. I agree with Peter Wood who commented on PBC that if the culture war is over, efforts to reform the university are pointless, and we obviously don't think such efforts are pointless or we wouldn't be here at PBC. Neither would the Manhattan Institute have initiated its Minding the Campus feature. Neither would Regnery be issuing its politically incorrect guides to various subjects. And so forth.
I also think that Lindsey's view of modern life as the “exuberantly pluralistic pursuit of personal fulfillment through an ever-expanding division of labor” is utterly soulless.
Also, Lindsey made some remarks in his part of the exchange, that the Right should be embarrassed about previous racism, sexism, and prudery. I don't have the exchange in front of me now, but I think that's close to what he said. In the National Review I read as a teenager, edited by William Buckley, I don't recall any of that. I recall its being sound, elegant, rational, cultured, with high intellectual standards. Lindsey should be prevailed upon to give specific examples of what he means by the sins of the Right in these areas.
(Excerpt) Read more at phibetacons.nationalreview.com ...
That's because society itself has a vested interest in preventing individuals from acting in a way which harms other individual members of society, and the stability of our commonwealth as a whole. The term "legislating morality" is a pseudo-nomer - meaning it is a term which sounds like it is being properly used, but which yet is not. It makes it sounds like morality is being positively legislated - i.e., the evil theocrats are running around passing laws saying you have to do such and such. Instead, what we see is negative legislation - people being restrained FROM activities, not being compelled TO them. This restrain, however, is legitimate because people are NOT free to engage in behaviours which harm others. We can see this for obvious examples such as murder or robbery, but many (i.e. libertarians) miss it for other activities like drug use which, while not perhaps being as overt, are yet destructive and corrosive to the lives of individuals and the cohesiveness of our commonwealth as a whole.
"Limited government" does not mean "no government". Government is properly limited to keeping individual members of society from harming other members - i.e. an arbitrative role.
Libertarians need to learn that their bumper sticker slogans no longer have any force or value. They need to get serious about actually defending what they believe, and provide justifications for why they think we ought to allow drugs (or pornography, abortion, or whatever else you choose to name) , rather than just whining abut social conservatives being "theocrats" or "communists" (actually had some fool call me that yesterday on the porn thread!).
I think this is the great flaw of libertarianism. The libertarian over-simplifies human nature, natural law, culture and society, family, church, and all that makes a nation a nation, and force their own analysis into the box of recognizing only the premise of the individual right to choose without any other factors or considerations recognized as legitimate. They reduce their own argument to an absurdity. It makes otherwise normal, moral, and sane individuals raving idealogues.
No, I don’t think majoritarian tyranny is ok.
I think the difference to me is that liberty is not the ultimate good, it is the means to the ultimate good, which is goodness it self. But goodness requires a moral choice, and in order to make a choice you need to be free.
I think there are some conservatives who forget that and want to force people to be good, and that is wrong. But what I think a lot of libertarian do is they start worshiping liberty as the ultimate good, and I get the feeling that they don’t really care how the liberty is used as long as people have it. Liberty can only be maintained with responsible use, I think a lot of so-call libertarians want all the benefit and none of the responsibility.
You either own your own body or you don’t. You apparently think we don’t own ourselves.
While much immorality isn’t necessarily subsidized, it is certainly protected. Take adultery for instance. It causes great societal harm but the government protects the adulterers from natural consequences. In the case of hospitals having to take poor patients, the hospitals are themselves protected by laws allowing insurance and labor union contracts which lead to the high medical costs to begin with.
You seem to have "Conservatives" confused with Republicans. Conservatives have NEVER controlled either House of Congress in my lifetime.
You are close to the nub of things here. The libertarian's primary concern with social conservatism is its comfort with the use of the power of the state to enforce a conservative notion of moral behavior. While many libertarians might be personally loathe to condemn behaviors some call sin (even if they would not engage in the behavior themselves), they would not have any objection on libertarian grounds to those who so choose to trying to persuade others (themselves included) to refrain from the behaviors. The example a libertarian friend used in college to illustrate this was a couple of (opposite sex-this was in the '60s) students coupling in public. If everyone in the environs wanted to shun the couple because they disapproved of the behavior, that would be just fine from a libertarian perspective. What would not be fine would be having the sheriff toss them in the calaboose.
The certainly can be legitimate discussion about where to draw the line between behavior that it is permissible for the state to actually prohibit, and libertarians and conservatives will come out at different places, but all but the most doctrinaire libertarians understand the need for some law.
From the beginning of the Libertarian Party in the '60s, I always found "Party Libertarians" as opposed to "libertarians (small 'l')" to have some of the same rigidity and fanaticism you see in the far left and far right.
I’ll stick with what Pope John Paul II said, “Freedom consists not in doing what we like, but in having the right to do what we ought.”
And that is because much of what is now called the Religious Right, or social conservatives, were once known as Southern Democrats, in the days before LBJ's Great Society. Church goers who were strong on defense, but who had a bias to big government solutions to societal ills. These very same people subsequently became known as Reagan Democrats. Ultimately many changed party affiliation and registered as Republicans. But they are what they always were, regardless of labels.
THAT'S exactly it, right there. Welfare, especially, has been the single biggest detriment to the cohesiveness of the family, upon which the cohesiveness of law and order, and our society in general, is based. Promote strong families by ending welfare and other "entitlements" which encourage familial dissolution, as well as reforming the tax code penalties against marriage, and you'll go a long way towards halting the moral dissolution of America.
Perhaps when the GOP gets serious about doing this, instead of porking it up in Congress and adding even more "entitlements", then maybe the libertarians will have someone to vote for?
I know the type: they are typically older - in their 30s, 40s, and even 50s - and constitute the Peter Pan League. They don't want to grow up, especially if it means putting down the reefer and putting down roots instead.
Those would be "Liberals", not libertarians. Jefferson/Madison oriented libertarians understand the requisite responsibility involved with liberty.
We just don't want to have to wear diapers when the guy down the street craps his pants.
Yeah, I guess you’re right.
A nation of immoral people is doomed; using the government to try to enforce morality only delays the inevitable.
____________________
I would assume that delaying the inevitable doom is preferable to being doomed now.
____________________
Mene, Mene, Tekel, Parsin
You made me laugh though! I just think that we cannot lose hope. No doom is inevitable. Only victory is inevitable and we aren’t the ultimate author of that victory.
With men this is impossible; but with God all things are possible.” Matthew 19:26
That is probably why we have to make the distiction between CONSERVATIVES and SOCIAL CONSERVATIVES. Social conservatives believe in many of the things "CONSERVATIVES" do, the difference is we care about the CULTURE too. And in some cases, as mine, I care even more about social values over everything else, even fiscal values and other variations.
I became a Republican (I am an independent now), because I was under the assumption that REPUBLICANS (most of them, 70% at least) cared about the culture. Now that I know this is not true, I am no longer a Republican. The problem is many people like me, still believe the Republican party stands for our values and so they still call themselves Republicans. But I think it's time to smell the coffee and debunk this myth? and start considering other options.
Yeah, I guess you’re right.
_____________________________________
A changed opinion? Holy bill of rights Batman.
You’re as backwards in your thinking as your “Macaca” hero was—and that’s the real reason he lost the Va. Senate race. Libertarians basically liberals out of our wallets and you foaming-mouth right of Atilla the Hun types out of our bedrooms...what right does (left-wing or right-wing) government have to tell us what we must wear (i.e. seatbelts), or outrageously tax for doing (i.e. smoking), or for even making bad choices for ourselves when it does not harm others?
I own my own piece of property too, but that doesn't give me the right to pour motor oil into the stream running through it, so that it pollutes the property of the guy downstream.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.