Libertarian Folly: Why Everybody is a Social-issues Voter

American Thinker ^ | 08/07/2014 | Selwyn Duke

[SeekAndFind]

There is this notion, one we hear more and more, that the Republican Party has to shed the social issues to seize the future. “Social issues are not the business of government!” says thoroughly modern millennial. It’s a seductive cry, one repeated this past Tuesday in an article about how some young libertarians dubbed the “Liberty Kids” are taking over the moribund Los Angeles GOP. Oh, wouldn’t the political landscape be simple if we could just boil things down to fiscal responsibility? But life is seldom simple.

If you would claim to be purely fiscal, or assert that “social issues” should never be government’s domain, I’d ask a simple question: would you have no problem with a movement to legalize pedophilia?

Some responses here won’t go beyond eye-rolling and scoffing. Others will verbalize their incredulity and say that such a movement would never be taken seriously. This is not an answer but a dodge. First, the way to determine if one’s principles are sound is by seeing if they can be consistently applied. For instance, if someone claims he never judges others, it’s legitimate to ask whether he remains uncritical even of Nazis and KKK members; that puts the lie to his self-image. And any thinking person lives an examined life and tries to hone his principles.

[GeronL]

I remember one extreme libertarian (”social liberal”) forum, but the URL is long gone from my brain. It proposed that it was okay for parents and children to sleep together in the nude and whatever else as long as the child was “comfortable” (read “desensitized/brainwashed”) with it.

After all, they argued, the child has just as much right to sex and stuff as adults (as if this child has the faculty of an adult and wasn’t being desensitized to it for life, having no idea what “normal” is, how would such a child make a ‘choice’ if they have known nothing else?)

So get the kids drunk and high and bring them to bed with you, after all it’s their “rights” too.
__________________

As I said these kind of extreme Libertopians deserve their own classification. These people are far more “lost” than the freepers we argue with all the time.

[ansel12]

Why would you ping people to argue, and as far as the links I put together a couple of years ago, I still have them.

[ansel12]

No he didn’t, in an interview with a libertarian audience for an obscure libertarian magazine as he was campaigning for president in 1975, he made nice, he found common ground in his opening remarks on economics, (his degree was in economics)and then proceeded to explain during the rest of the interview why he was a conservative and not a libertarian.

Reagan was no libertarian.

[GeronL]

The only time I got a “time out” on FR was after me and some idiot who thought kiddie porn was “art” went at it for a several hundred post thread.

[tacticalogic]

No he didn’t, in an interview with a libertarian audience for an obscure libertarian magazine as he was campaigning for president in 1975, he made nice, he found common ground in his opening remarks on economics, (his degree was in economics)and then proceeded to explain during the rest of the interview why he was a conservative and not a libertarian.

I didn't claim he was libertarian. I said he spoke of libertarianism. The libertarianism he spoke of doesn't seem to be anything like the accusations that are being made here. Where did that disconnect happen?

[Boogieman]

“No he didn’t”

Didn’t what? Speak of libertarianism?

Then you go on to admit in your comment that he did just that...

[Boogieman]

Well, here is the introductory description of libertarianism from Encyclopaedia Britannica, let’s start there:

“libertarianism, political philosophy that takes individual liberty to be the primary political value. It may be understood as a form of liberalism, the political philosophy associated with the English philosophers John Locke and John Stuart Mill, the Scottish economist Adam Smith, and the American statesman Thomas Jefferson. Liberalism seeks to define and justify the legitimate powers of government in terms of certain natural or God-given individual rights. These rights include the rights to life, liberty, private property, freedom of speech and association, freedom of worship, government by consent, equality under the law, and moral autonomy (the pursuit of one’s own conception of happiness, or the “good life”). The purpose of government, according to liberals, is to protect these and other individual rights, and in general liberals have contended that government power should be limited to that which is necessary to accomplish this task. Libertarians are classical liberals who strongly emphasize the individual right to liberty. They contend that the scope and powers of government should be constrained so as to allow each individual as much freedom of action as is consistent with a like freedom for everyone else.”

Note that when they say “liberal”, they mean “classical liberalism”, not the modern progressive-Marxist variety that is called liberalism. That’s a whole ‘nother term that people tend to be quite confused about nowadays, if you don’t define it explicitly.

[Boogieman]

“Where did that disconnect happen?”

My theory is that, during the 80s-90s there was a coup in the big “L” Libertarian Party, where the objectivist Rand followers and the anarchist wing took over and began setting the agenda for the party. Since they are the most vocal people that the average person hears calling themselves “libertarian”, their positions are all that less informed people now associate with the word.

[ansel12]

Actually if you read that 1975 libertarian interview that you want to pretend is something important, as lonely as it it in his long life of politics, Reagan while wanting to keep his audience, still disagrees with them about what we do here at FR as well, social liberalism and being weak on national defense.

[trisham]

That’s a starry-eyed definition from an outdated source.

[Boogieman]

Hey, I’m a conservative, not a libertarian. So, I am never going to agree that libertarianism is the best political philosophy out there. I think it has flaws that conservatism addresses better.

However, there are plenty of things the philosophy does get right, and has in common with conservatism. Certainly most other ideologies, like progressivism, marxism, fascism, etc, get more things wrong than libertarianism does.

[tacticalogic]

Since they are the most vocal people that the average person hears calling themselves “libertarian”, their positions are all that less informed people now associate with the word.

Can you give me a good reason why we should let them re-define that term for us?

[Boogieman]

Well, you are free to offer a better source for us to evaluate, or point out where their definition gets it wrong...

[tacticalogic]

Actually if you read that 1975 libertarian interview that you want to pretend is something important, as lonely as it it in his long life of politics, Reagan while wanting to keep his audience, still disagrees with them about what we do here at FR as well, social liberalism and being weak on national defense.

Is that a vote for not wanting to figure out exactly what he meant by "libertarianism", and use that definition?

[trisham]

See post #80.

[Durus]

My definition? We are talking about the Constitution and supporting documents, none of which require an opinion or a personal definition, just reading comprehension.

The purpose of our government is to secure our rights. The right to life and liberty being primary amongst those rights.

[ansel12]

I’m not mystified or trying to mislead people like you by continually connecting the words “Reagan” and “Libertarian”, so I already know why he was a conservative and not a libertarian.

Reagan had little to say about them, that is why he wasn’t one of them.

[ansel12]

It is where they want to fight us that they reveal their leftism and their threat against conservatism.

Here is the leftists agenda hidden behind the Libertarian Party curtain.

Libertarian Party Platform:

Throw open the borders completely; only a rare individual (terrorist, disease carrier etc.) can be kept from freedom of movement through “political boundaries”.

Homosexuals; total freedom in the military, gay marriage, adoption, child custody and everything else.

Abortion; zero restrictions or impediments.

Pornography; no restraint, no restrictions.

Drugs; Meth, Heroin, Crack, and anything new that science can come up with, zero restrictions.

Advertising those drugs, prostitution, and pornography; zero restrictions.

Military Strength; minimal capabilities.

[tacticalogic]

I’m not mystified or trying to mislead people like you by continually connecting the words “Reagan” and “Libertarian”, so I already know why he was a conservative and not a libertarian.

So, by your account wanting people to look up the meanings of words and agree on an objective definition is "misleading".

I'll remember that.

[Boogieman]

That is supposed to be an unbiased source for a definition of libertarianism, or what?