Posted on 07/13/2002 2:49:41 PM PDT by fporretto
2. and 3. You have not answered and merit no reply.
I'm glad to hear that the LP is an atheist party. (That's a surprise to me, really). I jumped ship from the GOP simply due to its religious slant, and I'm fairly new to voting LP.
I hadn't considered voting LP previously because every LP site I visited and almost every Libertarian with whom I spoke online was a CHRISTIAN, not an atheist.
BTW, there are many liberal "Christians" who are pro-choice; maybe you don't consider them as true "Christians", but they do! And, yet, I as an atheist (and some other atheists with whom I've spoken) favor a "pro-life" policy. So, like the author, I differ with the LP on that issue.
I'm not crazy about other LP issues either: I think drug use is senseless. YET, I can see how ridiculous it is to spend billions trying to save people from themselves.
I'm not a gun enthusiast (to put it mildly). YET, I can understand the dangers behind banning gun ownership and gov't control.
I don't want a homosexual or pro-abortion agenda taught to our children in school. THAT'S WHY the LP position of separating SCHOOL and state seems to be the best solution.
I've spoken with people who are racist LP members. But, guess what? There are racist and homosexual and pro-abortion and Christian and atheist and drug-using people in ALL the parties. So, like you, Malcolm, I cannot relate to every single LP voter, just like I cannot relate to every single American, but I can embrace the principles.
May I add, that there are those who regard capital punishment as violence but few executed killers (Ted Bundy, et al.) have later killed again?
Many, all too many libertarians, party members and otherwise, are atheists, at least in the judgment of Christians (or we would not be very good Christians). They are certainly free to be atheists. This is the United States which, by the First Amendment, has guaranteed not to interfere with atheism, deism, Satanism, Catholicism (my flavor), Judaism, other forms of Christianity, Buddhism, Shinto, Hinduism. Atheism is therefore, at least in the United States, not a political platform any more than is Catholicism or the other religious avenues mentioned.
My Catholicism is not damaged by the mere fact of your atheism nor vice versa. In fact, my Church is harmed much more by Mario Cuomo, Ted Kennedy, Chris Dodd, Tom Daschle, John Rowland, Richard Durbin, Joseph Biden and an absolute host of other public hypocrites, baptized as Catholics and claiming fraudulently membership in the Faith or by Cardinal Law, Cardinal Mahoney, and the various AmChurch liberal excuses for "Catholic" leadership than the Catholic Church could ever be harmed by any government much less one with the First Amendment.
If, as an atheist, you are nonetheless a pro-lifer or if, because of your atheism, you are a pro-lifer, thank you. You put to shame those who falsely claim Christianity while supporting the slaughter of innocent unborn children. Your virtue,under the circumstances, is heroic.
If Catholics ask you to be Catholic or sola Scriptura Christians ask you to be Christian, don't be offended since we or they are only trying to share what we deem most precious. We ought never to be rude even if you rebuff the effort. We who hold to reasonably orthodox faiths ought to recognize that as a gift.
Please don't be allergic to Christians of any reasonably orthodox sort. You will find us very valuable and dependable allies in many things you care about, though we may squabble sometimes in an unseemly fashion among ourselves (not unlike my children).
. . . and I knew him when . . .Hi, Fran! Bump for later . . .
Some of my thoughts:
Collectivists and other anti-freedom forces are more powerful than individuals. It is impossible to maintain freedom from tyranny (we have a small government Constitution yet we have a large government). Collectivists lust for the wealth of capitalism and use it to fund their power grabs. Individual freedoms include religion but religions are also groups which seek power. Greed and the desire to control others is a powerful force.
The downside of bigger government is never obvious to the individual The power seekers never think 'out of the box' for problem resolution. The answer is always bigger government and tax the rich. It's like curing a headache by hitting our head with a hammer to creater a greater pain. Here's where propagandists use democracy to their advantage. We don't need government to fund our insurance policies. Capitalism won't break if we do nothing. On the contrary, the individual, the nation, and the world thrive with minimal govenrment. The unattainable ideal for problem resolution is to default to non-government solutions.
First, thanks for joining me here. I've been thinking hard about a "majority libertarian-conservatism," and what it would require, and it's good to see that others are, if not necessarily in agreement with my tentative conclusions, at least interested enough in the subject to pursue it in company, more or less civilly.
I'm sure you noticed the emphasis on "tentative." All conclusions in the political sphere must be tentative. Scott Adams, he of "Dilbert" fame, has told us in his marvelous book The Dilbert Principle that we're idiots, and take it from me: he's right. Want proof? The thing we do best is learn from our mistakes! A non-idiotic race would have found a better way centuries ago, a way that averted the need to try everything at least twice.
Anyway, to get back to the re-examination of libertarian thinking, the central tenet thereof is ethical individualism: that is, the maintenance of the fundamental rule of right action that individuals ought to be free to do as they please with that which is rightfully theirs, including their bodies and all their other property.
I could go into a long disquisition about the evolving concept of property and how the concept of rights has mutated alongside it, but you have better things to do than read that abstract a rant, especially on a Sunday morning. Suffice it to say that, when we unpack the principle of ethical individualism carefully, and with due regard for the precise meanings of its components, the largest problems attached to "pure" libertarianism tend to disappear.
Much of the difficulty arose from overextending the individual-rights model, into areas where, for the present and foreseeable future, human beings don't have the option of dealing with one another as individuals. There's a strain of anarcho-libertarian thought that holds that the ideal to strive for is the elimination of all political collectivities. It has much merit -- as a hope for the future, after much else has changed. I received an E-mail note last night on that very subject, from a gentleman by the name of Mark Fadiman, who writes for Investors' Business Daily. His reflections were stimulated by the lead article in this thread. I plan to explore them with him as time permits.
Are there still questions of importance, to which "pure" libertarian thinking cannot give satisfactory answers? Perhaps. Some may have been raised here. But if we keep our thinking caps on and avoid dogmatism and cant, we might just see our way clear to their solutions.
Sam Cree: All of the Founding Fathers, including the most government-oriented of them, were far more freedom-minded than anyone in politics today except for Ron Paul. Probably the most freedom-minded was Thomas Jefferson, who adopted liberty as his animating ideal from the composition of the Declaration of Independence, if not before. Incidentally, one of our blessings, as Americans, is to have that document as our birth certificate. Nothing else in political literature remotely compares to it.
Starwind: All the areas of contention you cite are "commons problems": areas where we've traditionally relied on collectivized solutions. In some cases, they should remain that way, at least for the present, because a sudden privatization would cause more chaos than the incremental improvements from privatization would be worth. In others, such as limited-access highways and airports, there's a strong case to be made for trying privatization. As a general observation, I propose that the accumulation of wealth and the advance of technological progress naturally expand the thinkable sphere of individual liberty. If these trends continue, it will become possible, and beneficial on net balance, to whittle away more of our collectivities in favor of individual choice and private property.
On the subject of private property: It's remarkable how much trouble has been caused by the seemingly minor incursions on that concept by the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Once upon a time, good behavior was reinforced by the unwillingness of good people to associate themselves with a bad actor socially or commercially. People wouldn't buy from or sell to someone whose behavior had brought shame on the community. His recourses were few; usually the best of them was to move to another place where he might be able to "live down" his transgressions. The antidiscrimination provisions of the 1964 CRA, by severing many of the rights associated with private property, especially private business enterprises, destroyed those correctives to bad public behavior.
Vercingetorix: (That's a name I haven't heard since high school Latin!) You are correct that abortions will occur even if there are stringent laws against them. That was one of the arguments adduced by the pro-choice forces in the years before Roe v. Wade. Whatever decisions are made about abortion will be arbitrary and political, which is to say, they won't be reasoned tightly enough to be free from all objections, and they'll have to command a majority consensus to be stable. In the near term, I anticipate a legal regime in which a baby that shows brain waves has Constitutionally protected rights to life. At the least, that would make our definition of the inception of human life consistent with our definition of human death. It would certainly be preferable to the current regime, in which partial-birth abortions of entirely viable babies are essentially unregulated.
Ultimately, the limitation of the practice of abortion to some irreducible minimum will require that we reconstruct what President Bush called "a culture of life." For abortion is very easy, and with modern technology all first-trimester abortions and most second-trimester abortions can be performed in such a fashion that no one aside from the unwilling mother and the abortionist need ever know. Given those circumstances, the only way to stem the blood tide of abortion yet avert a police state is to get women to conceive only wanted babies. From here we could go in a dozen different directions, but it's too big a subject for one rant.
conservatism_IS_compassion: Good to hear from you again, Lynn. I hope all is well with you and yours. Drop a line sometime, and perhaps we can get together for lunch.
To everyone: Keep your thinking caps in place and your humility screwed on tight. Conservatives and libertarians have far more in common than the often vitriolic exchanges here and elsewhere would suggest. Libertarians need the conservative respect for the wisdom available from tradition and experience. Conservatives need the fundamental principles and willingness to admit failure that libertarians can provide. Frank Meyer and others poured their efforts into harmonizing individual freedom and the maintenance of common norms. The least we can do is... well, it's what we're doing here!
Freedom, Wealth, and Peace,
Francis W. Porretto
Visit the Palace Of Reason: http://palaceofreason.com
And, if the fetilized egg has rights, is the government obligated to find a womb to protect that egg till birth & then raise the baby to adulthood?
Of course no one is going to prosecute lab techs for murder. No, the government does not have the obligation to "find a womb" for every fertilized egg now in storage.
That doesn't change the fact that each fertilized egg is a human being, and that killing him or her is murder.
It is possible to commit murder without being prosecuted for it. It isn't being prosecuted that makes one a criminal; it's committing the crime that makes one a criminal.
At some point, near viablity, so conceded. But a womans egg, fertilised in the lab, is obviously not a being with rights. Therefore, it is a moral dilemma as to exactly when a developing fetus has rights that supersedes its mothers.
The problem seems to be determining at what point "life" begins. I view the nine or so months spent in gestation as a continuum, so it's difficult to pinpoint that exact time. With that in mind, isn't the most moral course of action one that advocates - to a certainty - no violation of the child's rights? And isn't the only certain assumption one that says life begins at conception?
Mr. Porretto, I like the way you reason.
Sounds good to me
Obviously public roads, police and fire dept., drainage and sewer systems, and public building inspectors are all a matter of public safety and use, and as a libertarian I have no problem with those things being managed and regulated at a local and state government level by elected officials, i.e. city councils, city managers, and of course, mayors and governors.
I use the phrase "obviously public roads" because I do believe that limited-use roadways should at some point be privatized. A subdivision whose roads only access other roads in the subdivision and offer no outlet to other public areas should expect no funding from the general public for their roads. In such cases, the land developer and/or homeowners association should be responsible for the maintenance of roadways, and the method of funding, be it an annual fee to homeowners or a toll, should be left up to those associations.
As for public schools - get the government out of the business. End of story. No public funding - give me the money you take from me every year for public schooling, and if I have a child, I'll either send that child to the private school of my choice or home-school. If I don't have a child, there is absolutely no reason for any of my money to go towards the schooling of someone else's. If all schooling became privatized, general scholarships from private organizations would begin to be established immediately, much as those awarded to college students, so I don't believe that this method would deny poor families from getting their children necessary education.
As for the funding of all city, county, and state public-use programs, as long as the money doesn't come from an income tax at any level, I'm game. I fully support the use of state lotteries to generate revenue. I also have no problem with the concept of sales or property taxes at any level. I can choose to buy a new television or DVD, knowing that I will be charged 10-15 cents on the dollar in city and state sales taxes, or even a federal sales tax, or I can choose not to buy said item. If the government weren't automatically taking money from my income whether I spend it or not, I would have no problem paying higher taxes when I do choose to spend it.
I am a pro-life Libertarian. Abortion is murder, period.
But, what to do about it?
35 million american women so far have had abortions. We simply cannot afford to house 35 million women, and counting, in our prisons for life, at $30,000 apiece each year. That is trillions of dollars!!!
I also do not see our country giving the death penalty. I really do not believe that we would execute 35 million american women, even though they desreve it.
Thus, if there is no punishment to fit the crime, any law against it would be meaningless.
Furthermore, if we did execute the 35 million women, and were successful in stoping abortion, who is going to raise and pay for 10 million unwanted kids each decade? We certainly do not want the kids left in the care of a mother who would rather kill the baby if it were not for it being against the law.......
I see no one who is willing and able, and is stepping up to the plate with CASH!!! to adopt 35 million babies and more.
a good name it is and i agree with your sentiment. :)
80 % is far to low.
Libertarians do not believe in the "initiation of violence", but we are well armed for defense, much more so than the average run of the mill conservative, and we are MUCH more against any laws against any personal weapon.
There are many conservative that are against private ownership of assault weapons, machine guns, dynamite, etc, that Libertarians, and all of American society for the first 150-200 years of our existance, saw no problems with.
At some point, near viablity, so conceded. But a womans egg, fertilised in the lab, is obviously not a being with rights. Therefore, it is a moral dilemma as to exactly when a developing fetus has rights that supersedes its mothers.
The problem seems to be determining at what point "life" begins. I view the nine or so months spent in gestation as a continuum, so it's difficult to pinpoint that exact time. With that in mind, isn't the most moral course of action one that advocates - to a certainty - no violation of the child's rights? And isn't the only certain assumption one that says life begins at conception?
Certainly, a unique life begins at conception. -- But why would human rights immediately begin that supersede those of its mother? -- As I said at #33:
An egg is not a being, nor is a sperm. -- Combining them in a lab is not an act of creation. Months of gestation are necessary before a viable human being, with individual rights exists.
- So our existing law reasons.
I've seen no better solution to this moral dilemma over mother/baby rights. -- Nor have I seen one from any one else .
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