Libertarians today are NOTHING like the ideal Reagan had in mind. Liberals corrupted the libertarian agenda.
With that in mind - does Rand Paul have a chance at redefining the libertarian agenda that has been bastardized by his own father?
Its a good article folks. Worth a clickie.
Oh. I forgot. Tagline does not show up until after reply 1.
Also... I’ll post those comments Reagan made that clarified his position on liberaltarianism.
“I think that, like in any political movement, there are shades, and there are libertarians who are almost over at the point of wanting no government at all or anarchy,” Reagan said in that same 1975 interview with the libertarian magazine Reason.
The word “libertarian” is being used derogatorily across the media. We’ll be seeing a lot of it going forward as they attempt to associate libertarianism with kookery as they have conservatism.
You have to understand that this was an “early” Reagan quote (though he was a two term governor of CA by then), and he said this to a (L)libertarian audience (so, I guess he was lying), and he went on to disagree with the Libertarian Party over what he called “gray areas”, and this was isolated (meaning Reagan was lying or something), and other stuff. I’ll need a lobotomy to finish explaining how Reagan was adamantly opposed to all that can be called “libertarian”. Reagan hated Friedman, Hayek, Von Mises, Rothbard, et al. Right?
IMO they are going to become the official opposition the way things are going.
Not necessarily a good thing if like me you’re pro-life and don’t think drug legalization would be a positive.
So someone who hates Libertarians is defining for us what a Libertarians really should be and what he thought Reagan really meant?
Wait, I’m out of popcorn. I’ll be back.
I will support candidates who are fiscally Conservative and socially Conservative. And whether I am consistent on that or not -- no matter what I do -- I do not think electoral politics matters in the foreseeable future. Nothing will change until after the war and, yeah, that's coming.
The media and democrats will use the split, and it appears
GOP candidates are only too happy to assist them.
Reagan was a great force, and his party unified under his leadership.
Reagan understood the balance between principle and pragmatism, to win and govern.
Libertarianism needs to go away and go away NOW. Start a 3rd Party, join the Dims, I don’t care. I’m as likely to vote for ODumbo as I am a Libertarian.
A quote about economic commonality from a 1975 interview from the conservative candidate speaking to a small libertarian magazine, purely for a libertarian audience, and minutes before he switches to telling the libertarians how much he disagrees with them on social issues and national defense?
The only difference between a libertarian and a conservative is Libertarians are very strict about the separation of church and state and want pot legalized. Otherwise they are the same thing. That is what needs to be discussed within the party. I know it's hard for some conservatives to want to detach religion from government ,but that is the only compromise that needs to to be made in order to grow the base. When it comes to gay marriage most educated Libertarians believe the government should have no involvement in marriage and should be determined by just the religious institutions. Over the past 5 years I feel conservatives and libertarians have come so close that they could almost outnumber the GOP supporters in the general population. Conservatives finally agree our youth shouldn't be thrown in jail with rapists, murders, cocaine dealers, meth heads, gangsters, and other monsters for smoking some pot.
All these ideas that Libertarians are whack jobs is strictly something cooked up by the GOP,Liberals, and of course the mainstream media in the United States alone.
The way Libertarians are viewed outside the US is pretty much the way Libertarians view themselves:
Americans are gradually switching to international news sources to get the news as most American News have lost their credibility over the lies spread over the past year. I feel a streak of Libertarianism is what the world needs.
Especially in light of his strong anti-RKBA stance.
Liberals corrupted the libertarian agenda.
Agreed. Which is why I am in no way affiliated with the National Party. Nor will I be until the Truther/anti-war/Doper hippy wanna-be, liberTINES are ousted.
IOW... I'd rather the TEA Party form up as an actual political Party to do to the wayward GOPe what the GOP did to the Whigs.
full disclosure: this is my own novel political analysis and theory of libertarianism (however, for me it has so far predicted their actions with precision):
libertarians are usefully described as leftists who despise the big-government control so loved by their leftist compatriots. their frustrated failure to convince their fellow leftists of the obviousness of their position, drives them away from the left and into limbo.
they don’t like the limbo the find themselves in so they make common cause with “conservative” republicans in order to find outlets for their leftist desires for political power and control. their problem in the republican party, however, is the existence of conservatism. they are equally repelled by that conservatism and it’s belief and American exceptionalism and the rule of law based for governing the civil society based on the Bible.
thus they must root out conservatism in the republican party inorder to take it over for libertarian purposes.
so this leads to the following conclusions:
libertarians are at the heart of the so called know-it-all “moderates,” that the conservative media finds so hard to understand.
that in a nutshell is why you see libertarians slowly replacing conservatives in the republican party, which is slowly absorbing the libertarian agenda, replacing the conservative platform of the traditional republican party, and it is also why you see the actions of so called “rinos” winning the day in that party.
The whole quote shows a somewhat different context;
“If you analyze it I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism. I think conservatism is really a misnomer just as liberalism is a misnomer for the liberals–if we were back in the days of the Revolution, so-called conservatives today would be the Liberals and the liberals would be the Tories. The basis of conservatism is a desire for less government interference or less centralized authority or more individual freedom and this is a pretty general description also of what libertarianism is.”
“Now, I can’t say that I will agree with all the things that the present group who call themselves Libertarians in the sense of a party say, because I think that like in any political movement there are shades, and there are libertarians who are almost over at the point of wanting no government at all or anarchy. I believe there are legitimate government functions. There is a legitimate need in an orderly society for some government to maintain freedom or we will have tyranny by individuals. The strongest man on the block will run the neighborhood. We have government to insure that we don’t each one of us have to carry a club to defend ourselves. But again, I stand on my statement that I think that libertarianism and conservatism are travelling the same path.”
Context is everything: http://reason.com/archives/1975/07/01/inside-ronald-reagan
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Pinging this out because libertarians often - usually - almost always - are not just social liberals, but extremely hedonist/anarchist on social issues; albeit sometimes hiding behind the skirts of "states rights". Although some have finally admitted to me, when cornered, that the states also have no right to make any morality based laws. But most I've "debated" with use duplicity and slogan slinging as their main "debating" methods. Obviously the Rand Paul/libertarian stuff is going to be more and more in the news, and it sure would be nice if libertarians who claim not to agree with the moral and open borders/immigration issues of the Libertarian Party platform would clarify their real viewpoint. I cannot for the life of me see why anyone would call themselves a libertarian if they don't agree with the LP platform...
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My libertarian brother-in-law likes to quote the Constitution when arguing abortion with me: “all persons born or naturalized..” is what he likes to say, claiming that a fetus isn’t legally “born” (no legal name, SS#, status, etc) and thus does not yet have any rights.
It’s disturbing how they’re willing to warp words for murderous purposes.
I seem to recall that someone on the radio once said that libertarians are nothing more than cofused liberals. I don’t recall who said it. I am beginning to think they may right.
Considering that some of them barely believe we should have a foreign policy and a government at all, sure.
But I have to wonder about what the "Republican orthodoxy" is. It seems like there are a lot of varied opinions out there short of absolute isolationism.
The Dems are socialists at heart; he pubbies are careerists at heart; both are servants of he existing system.
When folks are truly fed up with socialism, they will vote for an alternative.
I’d give it a few more years - the USA is not stony broke yet!
“There are so many people and institutions who come to mind for their role in the success we celebrate tonight. Intellectual leaders like Russell Kirk, Friedrich Hayek, Henry Hazlitt, Milton Friedman, James Burnham, Ludwig von Mises — they shaped so much of our thoughts.
It’s especially hard to believe that it was only a decade ago, on a cold April day on a small hill in upstate New York, that another of these great thinkers, Frank Meyer, was buried. He’d made the awful journey that so many others had: He pulled himself from the clutches of “The God That Failed,” and then in his writing fashioned a vigorous new synthesis of traditional and libertarian thought — a synthesis that is today recognized by many as modern conservatism.”
Yet another isolated quote.
Libertarians:
A bunch of drug-addled, baby-killing, boy-rapers....according to their platform.
Right Bortz?