Posted on 05/01/2002 9:09:03 PM PDT by Pokey78
Edited on 04/23/2004 12:04:26 AM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
Sept. 11 might have also brought down a political movement.
The great free-market revolution that began with the coming to power of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan at the close of the 1970s has finally reached its Thermidor, or point of reversal. Like the French Revolution, it derived its energy from a simple idea of liberty, to wit, that the modern welfare state had grown too large, and that individuals were excessively regulated. The truth of this idea was vindicated by the sudden and unexpected collapse of Communism in 1989, as well as by the performance of the American and British economies in the 1990s.
(Excerpt) Read more at opinionjournal.com ...
"Don't worry, son, we're just...uh...'servicing' the American people!
Have you no shame?
We know libertarians have no shame. If they had any conscience, they would have killed themselves long ago.
Now go to hell, you snot rag!
DO you find it to be too simplistic?
My point was this, Coloradan made a logical error in assuming that the terrorists would be armed with boxcutters and the passengers with firearms. Clearly if the passengers are armed then the terrorists can be armed as well. While a "bloody shootout" would prevent airplanes from being used as flying bombs, it's not clear how allowing all passengers to carry firearms would contribute to the plane being safely landed as Coloradan claimed. Of course, one could hypothesize conditions where the terrorists would be prevented from being armed, but if you can do that, then there is no reason to allow them on the plane in the first place.
I'm not at all thrilled with allowing passengers to fly "locked and cocked". I've seen too many incidents of unsafe gun handling to be sanguine with the prospect of allowing passengers to be armed. It only takes one undisciplined cowboy to cause all sorts of havoc on an airliner. Now, pilots are another thing entirely.
Look, you must be kidding. I see you're not a newbie so you must be blinded by your ideology (at least I hope that's it) to not "get it" when reading FR threads like this one. I recall a Bill Bennett thread, not drug related, on which, out of the blue, a bunch of Nazi/jackboots posts were made. I was mystified for a while but gradually came to realize it was all by his drug czar days.
Of course hardly any poster is going to some out and admit being a doper, but there is the occasional smoking gun.
I don't understand your agenda here, -- do you really think you are fighting to preserve & protect the constitution, -- by bashing libertarians who avow the same goals?
There exist private fire fighting agencies that sometimes lose employees in tragedies. Government firefighters have no lock on job mortality. Correct, as you stated this, yet this is not what the author said. He referred to a well-known fact that the market cannot provide public good such as firefighting, police, and the army.
Individuals fight terrorists just like governments do, except that in the case of 9-11 the facts indicate the superiority of citizens. No, it does not.
It was not the private citizens who went to Afghanistan, and they could not; rather, it was the U.S. army, which the markets cannot provide. A government is needed for that.
The screening of passengers at airports not only didn't prevent 9-11 from happening, it may have facilitated it by disarming the passengers such that just 4 or 5 men
Here you confuse the failure of the specific means with the very availability of the function.
Perhaps, next time you will not shoot from the hip.
These conservative vs libertarian arguments wouldn't even be an issue,
if the Republicans had stuck to their professed beliefs.
I didn't leave the Republicans, they left me.
What issues do I mean? "W" intends to unlaterally disarm a segment of
our nuclear force. He's blown off getting SDI. Like his father, he's taking
gun owners for granted. Today he even opposed guns for airline pilots.
In each of these cases, he's gone against existing conservative doctrine.
One can still generally support our president while wondering why he's
ignoring his supporters' wishes.
You remark exemplifies what Dostoyevsky called "arrogance of ignorance."
In brief: the government, by its mandate, attempts to maximize the social welfare function; it is this function that represents "collective interests."
Granted, there are difficulties in ascertaining the exact form of this function --- but an individual has difficulties in ascertaining his preferences; the difficulties, therefore, do not preclude the existence of that function. I have no idea what gives you the right to look at yourself and you world outlook with such admiration. You certainly have not demonstrated basic literacy in your post.
Dostoyevsky wrote also of another phenomenon, on which you should reflect: ignorance of arrogance.
As evidenced by what?
And the connection is...what exactly?
Libertarians promote a vile, vicious, sicko, wacko form of political philosophy. It has little in common with traditional, mainstream conservative values. Aside from some libertarians agreeing with conservatives and many republicans, that fiscal restraint, lower taxes/tax reform and smaller government, is the way to go, nothing else about the libertarian agenda makes any sense for America. That's why most people reject the Libertarian Party platform. The truth hurts, but it must be told. Read the platform. Libertarians are fiscally conservative, socially liberal and wrong most of the time.
If you want to pick and choose your political posiitons, like its a Chinese menu, don't be so quick to associate yourselves directly with the Libertarian Party. In other words, if you define yourself as a libertarian, then you must be held accountable for the positions of the Libertarian Party platform.
This is a uniquely American thinking --- that the money solves everything. What does the budget have to do with that?
We had a sufficient budget to fight and win in Vietnam, but the nation simply did not want to do that. We have not fought anything or anybody ever since. Instead we ran from everywhere, and this is what emboldened the enemy.
You may or may not agree with my explanation, but citing money in this context is... well I'd rather not characterize that.
The author is wrong. If anything, 9/11 was a reminder of why we should not play global dictator
Apparently, not only you have not travelled to counties under dictatorships --- you have not even read about them. Only ignorance at that level can cause someone to call the U.S. a "global dictator."
I do not know whether you view yourself as libertarian, conservative, or something else, but you certainly do not hold your own country in high regard.
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