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Paleolibertarians are essentially the more libertarian branch of the Old Right. They are devoutly anti-statist, but unlike many Randian libertarians, they are not hostile to traditional morality. Many of them are strong believers in traditional morality, viewing it as a proper framework for a free society. They do not confuse opposition to the government enforcing certain moral standards with a rejection of those standards.

In pratical terms, paleolibertarians are much more likely to oppose abortion or open borders (Peirce happens to oppose both, as well as the removal of the Ten Commandments from public places) and have a more favorable view of the traditional South. I don't consider myself one (I don't think their foreign policy is always realistic, as evidenced by Peirce's inability to discern a national interest in the Persian Gulf War), but I agree with them more frequently than I agree with the types of libertarians who dominate the Libertarian Party.

"Paleolibertarians are essentially the more libertarian branch of the Old Right. They are devoutly anti-statist, but unlike many Randian libertarians, they are not hostile to traditional morality. Many of them are strong believers in traditional morality, viewing it as a proper framework for a free society. They do not confuse opposition to the government enforcing certain moral standards with a rejection of those standards."

Whewwww! I was thinkin' about becoming one until I saw how complicated it is. I'll bet a lot of applicants to become paleoliberatarians flunk out just trying to spell the name. Please tell me you don't have some kind of initiation (hazing) on top of all those requirements 'cause this is getting way too wierd already.

Paleolibertarians are essentially the more libertarian branch of the Old Right. They are devoutly anti-statist, but unlike many Randian libertarians, they are not hostile to traditional morality. Many of them are strong believers in traditional morality, viewing it as a proper framework for a free society. They do not confuse opposition to the government enforcing certain moral standards with a rejection of those standards.

The key especially is in the final sentence. The libertarian who derives or otherwise draws his influence from the prime of the Old Right would say: Let the church and the synagogue tend to our morality, that is what the church and the synagogue are constituted best to perform. And, let the government tend to its simple and proper enough business of protecting a) her individual citizens and their rights against predators (real predators, please, not mere vicemongers - what you do in your home is between yourself and God and no one else's bloody business, so long as you keep it in your home and injure none while so doing; at the moment you inflict harm upon another, compel another forcibly to partake with you, or bring it to the public square where you've no assurance that your neighbour would indulge or otherwise bear what you do if allowed his own free choice, you then violate your neighbour's equivalent rights) at home, and b) all citizens against attack from abroad.

Even now, I rub my eyes at the thought that there were libertarians who missed a critical point from 9/11 and its aftermath. Reality check: We have for years spoken, as well we should, about both our right to defend ourselves against attack, and that none has the right to initiate force against another; well, guess what - We were attacked, and in perhaps the most heinous manner yet known; force was initiated against us; and, we can argue all we like about the underpinnings and wherefores as to why such force was or was not provoked, but for now force was initiated against us, and we have every right on God's green earth to have hit back, with such force as needed to neutralise the enemy while sparing the most precious of our resources, namely our men and women in uniform and in battle.

That, it seems to this libertarian (not, please, Libertarian; I have withdrawn from the LP, as noted earlier, for reasons best saved for discourse on another more appropriate thread), should have been the salient point of it all, even as we do rightly to remind ourselves of a crucial admonition enunciated once and best by Edward R. Murrow: As a nation, we have come into our full inheritance at a tender age. We proclaim ourselves, as indeed we are, the defenders of freedom, what's left of it in the world; but, we cannot defend freedom abroad by abandoning it at home.