Posted on 06/18/2002 8:09:35 AM PDT by ZGuy
After I wrote my column last week, "Why I'm not a conservative," many libertarians wrote in happily proclaiming me one of their own.
I hate to disappoint them, but that political label doesn't describe me, either.
Here's why I am not a libertarian – and why, I believe, that political movement will never resonate with the American people.
I believe a nation's borders are sacrosanct. Without borders, there are no nations. We become one big global village – subject ultimately to a new form of tyranny imposed by unaccountable internationalists. Borders are also critical to maintaining the distinct culture of a nation. That's not a racist or jingoistic concept – it is a matter of practicality. If anyone and everyone can become an American simply by relocating – and without any pledge to our nation's Constitution and political creed – then we lose everything our founding fathers established in fighting for our independence, our sovereignty and for the rule of law.
While I agree with libertarians that our national drug laws and the enforcement of those laws are terribly abusive and beyond the scope of our Constitution, I have no problem with states and local governments passing laws prohibiting the sale of narcotics and enforcing such laws. The truth is, legalizing dangerous drugs will surely lead to increased use and abuse – a trend that could pose problems as severe or worse than those created by the drug war. I'm all for ending the drug war at the ineffective federal level, but condoning drug use is the wrong prescription.
America needs a strong defense – and this is a reality many libertarians don't accept. True, the concept of defense in America has been distorted and twisted. We spend mega-billions not on defense, but on offense. We deploy tens of thousands of troops in more than 100 countries around the world as if America was the world's policeman. That is wrong. We leave Americans at home virtually defenseless against terror attacks and weapons of massive destruction. That is equally wrong.
Libertarians, more often than not, fail to understand the moral dimension so critical to self-government. Read the words of the founders. They all got it. They all intuitively understood that even the best form of representative and limited government would be twisted into coercive tyranny if the people did not have the basic morality necessary to govern themselves.
Libertarians make a fundamental mistake about the nature of man. Man is not inherently good. Man can only learn to govern himself when he understands there is a higher accountability – a higher authority. Ideally, that higher authority is not the government, but God. Government can only demand good behavior through force. But when individuals understand they are accountable to God, and that He requires certain kinds of behavior as defined in the Ten Commandments and the totality of scripture, there is a chance for man to maximize his freedom here on earth.
Freedom can only be experienced and maximized, though, when it is accompanied by personal responsibility. Personal responsibility cannot be legislated. It cannot be forced. It cannot be coerced. Libertarians generally understand this, but too few of them comprehend a laissez faire society can only be built in a culture of morality, righteousness and compassion.
Libertarians who expect to build such a society through politics alone make a fundamental error. In a sense, they are utopian dreamers like the socialists, ignoring the importance of human nature in shaping communities and nations.
I don't want to be too hard on the libertarians, because of all the political activists in America, they may have the best concept of limited constitutional government. That's a big start, but it's only a start. We cannot ignore the flaws in their positions. We cannot ignore the fact that they don't have a complete picture. We cannot ignore that a libertarian society devoid of God and a biblical worldview would quickly deteriorate into chaos and violence.
Would this country be better off with more libertarians? Absolutely. Do they have all the answers? Not even close.
The truth is there's more to life than politics. Much more.
Here's the way the father of our country and, as some have described him, "the father of freedom," George Washington put it in his inaugural address:
The foundations of our national policy will be laid in the pure and immutable principles of private morality, and the preeminence of free government be exemplified by all the attributes which can win the affections of its citizens, and command the respect of the world. I dwell on this prospect with every satisfaction which an ardent love for my country can inspire: since there is no truth more thoroughly established, than that there exists in the economy and course of nature, an indissoluble union between virtue and happiness; between duty and advantage; between the genuine maxims of an honest and magnanimous policy, and the solid rewards of public prosperity and felicity: since we ought to be no less persuaded that the propitious smiles of Heaven can never be expected on a nation that disregards the external rules of order and right, which Heaven itself has ordained: and since the preservation of the sacred fire of liberty, and the destiny of the republican model of government, are justly considered as deeply, perhaps as finally, staked on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American People.
When the libertarians add such a provision to their national platform, let me know. I'll be happy to consider the new label.
As Lazarus Long said: "If everybody knows such -and-such, then it ain't so, by at least ten thousand to one"
(1) Most of Europe has legalized (de jure or de facto) various drugs, and drug use has in many of these places gone down.
(2) The iron law of prohibition says that when you prohibit substances, you push people to harder and more dangerous (thus more easily transported and sold) substances. So: alcohol prohibition caused a massive shift to hard alcohol, drug prohibition has created crack. End prohibition and you'll see a big shift back to lighter drugs.
(3) As a parent, one of the most ridiculous things about the current drug war IMHO is that my middle school and high school aged kids could get drugs like ecstasy or even crack much more easily than they could get alcohol. (This is an example of 2 above.)
This too is mushy thinking. Tyranny is imposed by states. What the heck are internationalists and how are they going to impose tyranny?
Do you know when the US closed its borders to Latin Americans? 1965. Until 1965 any latin american who could pass a simple literacy test in either English or Spanish or Portuguese was free to immigrate here. Did we have as big a problem with immigration then as we do now? If not-- how have the immigration restrictions helped?
Know why they passed these restrictions in 1965? Johnson was greatly expanding welfare, so wanted restrictions to prevent freloaders from coming. Get rid of the welfare state, and you will do much more to solve immigration problems than any regime involving laws and borders and id cards could ever do.
Now I like Heinlein too, but LL was sorta nuts. The real problem with Libertarian policy is their concept that citizens are both responsible enough and willing enough to exercise their rights as citizens in their own best interest. We have had 40 years of intellectual and moral decline which has virtually mandated a citizenry who does not, in the majority, have sense enough to pour piss out of a boot with instructions on the heel.
Time and again whole groups of people vote for idiots, criminals or jackanapes who happen to have a "good TV presence." Those same people believe in aliens, HIV as a government plot to kill blacks, Illuminati and other assorted foolishness. When those same good citizens have their pre-conceived notions challenged, they become more than willing to use mob violence to express their feelings. In short, they don't have the sense that God gave goats.
Next, those same citizens are also more than willing to enlist the government to suppress people who they don't like. Whether they are liberal or conservative, it doesn't matter. Conservatives want their pet bugga-boos made criminal and Liberal's want their definition of evil writ in stone as commandments.
So, when Libertarians tell me that I should back their party and policies, as nice as they appear to me; I just think that it is a waste of my vote. In the real world I have liberal idiots to fight (Liberals do more damage when they get power) and voting for a Libertarian is a loss for limited government. The ONLY way that limited government proponents are going to get their policies enacted as law is to get elected, most likely as a Republican, and get the laws changed. Libertarians are not going to get that done.
But, at least they want to go the right direction on many issues.
As for the drug issue, there is a brand new reason to get rid of the WOD. Watching Alan Keys last night, Chuck Colson said he sees a massive Muslim recruitment going on in prisons. The guy they nailed the other day working on a dirty nuke converted to muslim in a US prison.
To the extent we can use profiling to stop terrorisim, it will work well, as long as terrorists are arab. But in 10 years, when the first southern accented black or latino takes out the Golden Gate bridge with a gasoline truck fire, we'll regret we didn't severly curtail the WOD and emptied out our prisons of non-violent druggies.
I do. The guy who killed the bar owners needed the money to by drugs at the artificially high prices maintained by the federal government. Most drugs would cost about what asprin does, without federal price supports.
The WOD is victim producing crime, and the two bar owners here in Phx were two of them. Drug use itself had nothing to do with it.
...because I don't believe in the Satanic Druids, or the Illuminatis. I don't believe that ALL drugs should be legalized. I don't believe that criminals and crazy people should have access to firearms. I positively don't believe that America's borders should be open, and free reign given to illegal aliens and terrorists! Our borders should only be open to United States Citizens, and legal immigrants.
In truth, the Founding Fathers were closer to anarchists than they are to today's Demopublicans.
Anarchists <------ Limited Constitutional Govt -------------------------------> Demopublicans
No truth there. Proposition 187 didn't have anything in it about cutting welfare to immigrants.
Libertarians, more often than not, fail to understand the moral dimension so critical to self-government. Read the words of the founders. They all got it. They all intuitively understood that even the best form of representative and limited government would be twisted into coercive tyranny if the people did not have the basic morality necessary to govern themselves.
Libertarians make a fundamental mistake about the nature of man. Man is not inherently good.
Joe makes THE fundamental mistake here about libertarians. I've been reading libertarian thought & philosophy for over forty years, - and I defy ANYone to quote a passage where man is assumed to be "inherently good".
Man can only learn to govern himself when he understands there is a higher accountability – a higher authority. Ideally, that higher authority is not the government, but God. Government can only demand good behavior through force. But when individuals understand they are accountable to God, and that He requires certain kinds of behavior as defined in the Ten Commandments and the totality of scripture, there is a chance for man to maximize his freedom here on earth.
So, -- in these lines we see Joes reason for his 'inherently good' tar baby. -- He wants an 'idealized' religious basis for government. Naturally, libertarians would object, just as the founders rejected such a basis in the 1st amendment.
Freedom can only be experienced and maximized, though, when it is accompanied by personal responsibility. Personal responsibility cannot be legislated. It cannot be forced. It cannot be coerced. Libertarians generally understand this, but too few of them comprehend a laissez faire society can only be built in a culture of morality, righteousness and compassion.
-- Big 'but', - and almost a contradiction in terms. - A society that insists on a morality enforced by its vision of a god could hardly become lazzez faire.
Libertarians who expect to build such a society through politics alone make a fundamental error.
Straw man. - Libertarians do not reject the other structures of society over politics & government. --- I fact, - they much prefer private solutions to political problems.
In a sense, they are utopian dreamers like the socialists, ignoring the importance of human nature in shaping communities and nations. I don't want to be too hard on the libertarians, because of all the political activists in America, they may have the best concept of limited constitutional government. That's a big start, but it's only a start. We cannot ignore the flaws in their positions. We cannot ignore the fact that they don't have a complete picture. We cannot ignore that a libertarian society devoid of God and a biblical worldview would quickly deteriorate into chaos and violence.
Sure Joe. -- The libertarian 'flaws' you see are those you invent. - And hyping 'chaos & violence' as an inevitable result of following constitutional libertarian concepts is just plain bull.
Would this country be better off with more libertarians? Absolutely. Do they have all the answers? Not even close. The truth is there's more to life than politics. Much more.
Disappointing platitudes. -- You have written some fine essays. -- This is not one of them.
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