Well, liberaltarians, who are joined with the left on the social issues, helped to put the communist back in the White House.
An odd comment, given that I voted a straight Republican ticket (as I always do).
Moral decline and societal decadence is everyone’s business.
Can drinking alcohol lead to moral decline and societal decadence? If the answer is "yes", do you wish to brink back Prohibition? I anxiously await your answer to each of these questions.
"An odd comment, given that I voted a straight Republican ticket (as I always do)."
As did I. To no avail. And I would respectively suggest it is the other way around. There will many people the Republicans kicked out of the tent and clearly turned off. Some ended up voting for Gary Johnson, some for Virgil Goode and some either stayed home or voted for Obama. If the Republican Party specifically, or the Right in general, wishes to take this country back then the message has to be about freedom and it has to be consistent and grounded in the Constitution.
Libertarians are the conservative's natural allies. There were a lot of them out there. The Tea Party, originally, was an alliance of both ideologies. The Ron Paul supporters were young people who were attracted to the idea of a strict Constitutionalist. Yes, they disagree with you on some social issues. But their votes were there for the taking. Their support of Ron Paul, or Gary Johnson, or their desire to reign in the federal government and end a decade of constant undeclared war was a clear rejection of the Democrtatic Party and Obama.
I did not vote Libertarian. I did not support Ron Paul in the primaries. But I'd sure as heck rather live in a country that was libertarian than socialist. If my wacky neighbor wishes to intoxicate himself or have sex that makes me uncomfortable, both of which which people have been doing since the start of time, I'll gladly stay away from him socially but accept his right to do as he pleases IF it means we join together and tell the federal government to adhere to the Constitution.
If we are going to tell Libertarians they are not welcome due to differences in how freedom is enjoyed, then we well regularly lose elections to people who tell us which freedoms no longer apply. Economic collapse, the NDAA, Obamacare, reckless foreign policy that leads to disaster... these issues are far more important and far more consequential than any squabble you or I or any conservative has with a libertarian. If you care more about what your neighbor does with his freedom then what your government does to yours, than you are the reason we have lost.
I think we can take back a lot of what we have lost, but it is going to take an alliance of everyone that is not a Statist. That means building an army that is not exclusively social conservatives. I wish that were not the case, but yesterday should make clear that it is.
So you voted Republican. Fine.
But there are many liberaltarians that did not vote for the GOP but voted for Gary Johnson.
I can see you are trying to turn this into a legal-drugs debate, and that is not the issue we were discussing.
The issue is the impact that supporting liberal social policies has on electing otherwise conservative candidates.
As I said, Liberaltarians (not conservative libertarians) are closer to the liberal DNC than they are to conservative Republicans. They help to ensure that leftists Dims get elected.
Your argument about alcohol is fallacious because it is equivocation. Sugary drinks COULD lead to societal decline. Anything could. The argument against legalized drugs is not in equivocating them with alcohol, because they are not the same. Liberaltarians support not only the legalization of pot but the complete deregulation of selling all drugs as well as the manufacture and distribution of all drugs. Where did that come from? A freeper right here on this board.
Alcohol can be a problem. No I don’t want it to be illegal. But that does not mean that I must therefore want to legalize all forms or recreational substances. Crack and heroin, how they impact the user, and how a society of crack and heroin addicts poses a far greater threat to society than does casual drinking. They can’t be compared one against the other because of the very volatility of the substances involved.
I’ll make a gentleman’s bet that within 10 years, there will be a fight to make some of the prescription-only medication that is also used for recreational purposes over-the-counter.
But as I said, this is not the discussion or the point I was making.
If these issues are important to people, they will vote for candidates who promise the legalization of drugs. Or they will NOT vote for those candidates who run on a platform that it’s probably a bad idea to have heroin sold out the liquor store. In either case, those voters will be electing for the most part leftists and socialists, because libertarians at this point cannot win elections, so they will be helping the DNC and other leftist parties.