Posted on 03/22/2013 8:51:10 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
My position - but I don't claim to be a libertarian.
Fine. I will say that is one position sometimes held by self-identified libertarians, as well as by self-identified non-libertarians, such as myself.
My self-identification is "religious conservative," and that plus $4.50 will get you a cheezburger and a milkshake, if you have a coupon.
http://www.gotoquiz.com/politics/political-spectrum-quiz.html
Criticism of libertarians by both major political parties is THE one big obstacle to all conservatives aligning against statist liberals in elections. Dems play the “cool & smart” card in every election: sex, drugs, atheism, high-speed rail, the UN and Agenda 21. “Message: Vote for Dems if you want powerful state control over everyone’s moral freedoms.”
Don’t let the moral choices of other individuals sway your voting choices. Dems are trying to accentuate individual choices, while conservatives are portrayed as trying to limit them through government. All the limitations have already been written into the Constitution & Bill of Rights. We need to get back to that as a unified party platform.
Sort of like equating murder with somebody smoking pot? That kind of mis-characterization? Or claiming somebody is in favor of child molestation because they don’t think government should be regulating adult sex lives. That kind of mis-characterization? Is that what you mean? Is that scurrilous, as well? I’m sure you will go back down the thread and address those instances accordingly.
Some self-identified libertarians support government enforcement of approval toward homosexuality
Such as?
David Boaz, author of Libertarianism: A Primer. He supports [...] enforcement of homosexual "tolerance," as well as special treatment for favored minorities.
I can't find any evidence for that, but only for the opposite:
"This year, as Financial Services chairman, he’s [Barney Frank] demonstrating his interventionist tendencies [...] He wants to push all workers into government health care, to regulate corporate decisions about executive compensation, to put more obstacles in the way of free trade across national borders, to keep Wal-Mart from creating an internal bank clearinghouse to hold down its costs. Not to mention expanding anti-discrimination rules to include gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people. [...] would that Barney Frank come to realize that adults should also be free to spend the money they earn as they choose and to decide what contracts, with foreign businesses or local job applicants, they will enter into." - http://www.davidboaz.com/?p=309
He is far from the only one. Our self-proclaimed libertarian on the FR North Carolina Forum is all about "gay marriage"
Which implies "government enforcement of approval toward homosexuality" only in combination with "anti-discrimination" laws that are contrary to basic libertarian principles (as voiced by Boaz above).
Did you just go read his whole book?
Don't bother to answer. I don't know what your agenda is, but it is not edifying discussion, so you just go on and have a nice day. It's been fun a brief distraction from a small but very tiresome financial issue I've been addressing all day.
Of course not. The appropriate moral judgements are those any sane person would agree to - I don't wanted to be robbed, so stealing is wrong - I don't wanted to be killed, so most killing is wrong, etc.
Self interest will be adequate in most cases, and interestingly enough correlates pretty well with Biblical judgements.
I can't find any evidence for that
Did you just go read his whole book?
I thought you mentioned his book only to establish his bona fides. Google Books shows 7 hits for "gay"; the only relevant one is this, which contradicts your claim:
'Gay activists claim a right not to be discriminated against; their opponents - echoing Mencken's jibe that Puritanism is "the haunting fear that someone, somewhere may be happy" - claim a right to know that no one is engaging in homosexual relationships. [p. 88] [...] If we accept the libertarian view of individual rights, we have a standard by which to sort out all these conflicting rights claims. [p. 89] [...] If a Christian landlady refuses to rent a room to unmarried couples, it would be unjust to use the power of government to force her to do so. [...] People [...] don't have a right to force anyone to hire them or do business with them. [p. 90]'
“but its in schools being shoved down the throats of kids, its all over TV and they want to punish those who have differing opinions.... hardly “in their bedrooms””
That’s where people misunderstand libertarians.
This crap would never be pushed in schools — schools would be cut to the bare essentials -— reading, writing, ‘rithmatic.
In fact - if a state passes laws that require renting to sodomites - the lib places greater value on that law over his own personal convictions.
Your misunderstanding of libertarianism is breathtaking.
Of course there's no need for a law "for or against enforcing a motel owner to rent to sodomites."
The motel owner has absolute control over who he or she rents to. No "law" is necessary to enforce that right. The market will take care of that. If the motel owner discriminates against the wrong people, popularity of the motel will sag, business will dry up, and soon there'll be another owner.
Your second contention, that "the lib places greater value on that law over his own personal convictions" tells me you know very new libertarians - or their philosophy - or you've got 'em confused with authoritarians.
Those are not REMOTELY libertarian positions.
Maybe not, but they are the verifiable, real-world outcomes of policies that are supported by some self-described “libertarians.”
So libertarians are poor tacticians - that says nothing about the soundness of their principles.
I see we've found a point of agreement in this thread. And after many years, I don't recall your posts previously coming across that way.
Do you think such sweeping derogatory slurs validate your arguments ? Is is this just a gratuitous insult ?
Huh?
Do you think such sweeping derogatory slurs validate your arguments ? Is is this just a gratuitous insult ?
Huh?
I think jimt thinks you were applying the term Loserdopian to others. My read is that you were noting its past application to yourself.
Just reading the first two sentences, I don't get a sense that he's saying anything about political libertarians -- just contrasting two human attitudes towards morality, one permissive and one judgmental.
When you get to the third, sentence, then sure, he does get political. It's also highly questionable. When somebody puts "true" in front of the name of a philosophy or idea, it can be a sign that they're talking nonsense -- putting forward something that isn't "true liberalism" (say) but their own highly unrepresentative interpretation.
In this case, that hunch is right. Liberals, "true" or not, are far more likely to oppose judgementalism than libertarians. Or at least, far more concerned with people not facing the consequences of their actions, than libertarians, whose attitude is more along the lines of "you made your bed, now lie in it."
He's a devotee of John Stuart Mill and, I rush to add, has said many positive things about Reason over the years.
Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. That is the other Richard Reeves. He is an Englishman who wrote a book on Mill. This Richard Reeves is an American liberal of the midcentury, Truman-Kennedy-Johnson variety. (I laugh now because I made the same assumption myself -- as have others).
Who is the freakazoid mentally ill person who wrote this dreck?
One of the many ways libertarians (large L or small) debate duplicitously is by pretending that because there were no Federal laws against, for instance, sodomy, porngoraphy/obscenity, adultery and the like, that the states had not laws against immoral acts. They completely ignore the fact that the Founders did not promote licentiousness, in fact spoke and wrote against immoral behavior, and thought nothing wrong or unconstitutional against State laws against various immoral behaviors.
It is hard to understand the underlying opposition regularly found here on FR to reducing the role of government when as it stands today the government is one of the largest promoters of licentiousness.
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