Posted on 07/30/2002 6:46:04 PM PDT by RANDomScout
In this, my last scheduled contribution to Editor’s Links, I want to say a few nice words about libertarians – a much-maligned, funny, quarrelsome lot of people who were kind enough to foot my bills this summer.
One of the great things about laissez-faire types is that they’re not in power and – truth be told – they have no desire to be. This is seen by some as a bad thing; a sign that libertarians aren’t “serious people.” But the approach is not without its benefits.
Right- and left-wingers are tethered to partisan political movements or political parties, which can be a weights of albatross-like proportions. Advancing a party’s propaganda and interests often contorts and warps reality all out of recognizable proportion. For instance, a recent Washington Monthly review of right-wing bomb thrower Ann Coulter’s new book Slander relayed her claim that “for about twenty years now, all new ideas have bubbled up from the right wing.” The incredulous reviewer asked “All new ideas? All? Air Jordans? The Macarena? Pizza Hut's Stuffed-Crust Pizza?”
Across the aisle are odious pundits like Joe Conason who, in his Salon blog today credited “big government” with saving the Pennsylvania coal miners, reminded readers that Ted Bundy was a young Republican (only one step removed from Ralph Reed), and compared the Bush administration’s attempts to have hiring and firing flexibility in the newly created Department of Homeland Security to the anti-union “obsession[s] of totalitarian regimes and their imitators.” He justified this last charge by explaining – I am not making this up – that if Ann Coulter could be nasty then so could he.
Libertarians are sometimes damned as purists, but at least they aren’t as predictable or as boring as their sniping counterparts on the right and left. They’re also – and I say this from experience – a whole lot more fun. They lack the anti-corporate nervous tics of progressives (“Oh, I couldn’t order Dominos. Do you have any idea what kind of causes they finance?!”) and the woe is us moralistic hang-ups of conservatives (“There was sex on TV last night! We’re doomed.”).
A startlingly diverse group, the only common ground that all libertarians share is a desire to live in a society in which people are truly free – of wars, of petty government regulations, of a creeping Puritanism that holds suspect any fun activity. That might be a pipe dream, but it's one I’ve come to share.
Jeremy Lott is Reason's 2002 Burton C. Gray Memorial intern.
Every day I thank God that you are there to protect me and show me the error of my ways !
I am truly grateful, Kevin.
Then I look forward to the FOX report. LOL
Right, incest, bestiality and consensual pedophilia is OK too…Civilized society is a just an aberration, you can have your zoning laws revoked and live by strip clubs and blue movies, you can smoke your pot and heroin on your street corner, just do it some where it doesn’t matter, like Amsterdam. Just not in my back yard!
Sort of like what the concept of 'Ideals' has become to the Republican Party??????
redrock
Uhmm, no.
I despise Kevin (& cohorts) for the same reason I despise libs and cowards.
They claim the exclusive "right" to tell everybody else what to do.
Every 12 year old child agrees with you.
Uh, actually, the government has enforced it from the founding of our country. Thomas Jefferson even wrote laws enforcing it.
What you're interested in is an America that has never been and that the Founding Fathers never intended.
Tex --Without knowing what you said, you said it.
Thanks, But I am surprised you agreed. Grow the hell up! Life is not a "Lord of the Flies" novel.
Which bills have been submitted to congress by Republicans that heighten community standards of decency?
Oh, I forgot, the 'virtual child porn' bill. Noble as it is, it strikes me as a lot like running to the hottest part of a wildfire and then pissing on it.
What was the other one? The Communications Decency Act? The one that got struck down.
You talk about libertarians being idealists, look in the mirror. Not only idealists but ones with a schitzophrenic philosophy:
If homosexuality is indecent, immoral, etc - where is the political will to outlaw it?
The same with various sexual practices considered abnormal - I don't hear anyone demanding laws against that.
As with prohibition and the above examples, I think all your real moral issues have been made mute and now you are seeking minor ones on which to vent an aggression rather than have any real impact.
The libertarians are right on this one, personal condemnation of immorality is the way to uphold human dignity -- not through guns and censorship.
Why do you ask, you silly twit?
Does California know that you have this "arsenal" in your possession?
Should they? Whats your point?
Does your possession of 30 guns not make your silly blathering about gun-grabbers just a the paranoid ranting of an internet commando?
Not at all. Read Californias new laws on owning socalled 'assault weapons'. They are not a laughing matter to those of us who respect the constitution. - Your disrespect for it is sickening.
Ahh does Tpaine want an assault wifle? LMAO.
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