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.

[Blackirish]

Today’s NYtimes has a long article about libertarianism. If you read the comment section the far left posters hate libertarians and use the same strawman arguments as some of the posters here.

[ReformationFan]

Exactly. I have a cousin who claims to be “socially liberal but economically conservative.” Can someone please name one place where that’s ever worked in reality? The social liberal places always end up in calls for a bigger state to try to fix the results of social liberalism. That’s why communists and socialists love social liberalism so much.

[Boogieman]

“Interesting theory. I’m not sure what the change you’re talking about was, but I don’t really buy the idea that there was some king of coup. The basic elements of the LP have been there from the beginning.

There have been hard-edge economic libertarians and fuzzy social libertarians all the way along (the earliest platforms opposed laws against drug use and other victimless crimes).”

Yes, there has always been a lot of variations in the ideology, but it seems the social libertarians have become the dominant ones for a long time. That they may not be the most represented in the presidential candidates probably says more about their trying to put up a viable candidate, rather than the makeup of the party.

“I suspect the bigger changes since the 1970s have been among Republicans and conservatives, rather than among libertarians (big L or small l).”

Yes, there may be something to this. After all, a lot of the least socially liberal libertarians joined the Republican party during the Reagan years, so, naturally, the remaining LP membership would be more to the left with them gone.