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.
Yeah when will they start?
Perfect !
There are laws against that.
Good night little one.
No, we don't. I don't think the US is populated by 12 yr olds needing your guidance (at the point of a gun).
BTW you seem to be very fond of LOL at 1:30 in the am; have you be looked after by a government approved psychologist ?
No just libertarians. I use LOL a lot when dealing with 12 year olds. They are a funny bunch.
Now there ya go making puddles all over the floor.
'effing mind reader ...
"Miss Cleo Texasforever, what is my credit-card number ?"
Yeah when will they start?
I do so privately every day. I suspect the reluctance of libertarians to do so publicly is due to the fear that this will incite further laws.
Chunga (on sodomy,etc):There are laws against that.
And where is the conservative insistance they be enforced?
The righteous do not fear condemnation for doing what is right -- so where are all the 'righteous' when it comes to removing children from parents who are immoral in their homosexuality or their promiscuity -- or even their drug use?
These things are impractical on the government level, they can only be accomplished by a philosophical shift in societies values -- only when we 'learn'. Even then the pendulum will always oscillate.
You cannot stop the wheel of life, the ying and yang, you will burn your hands to touch it.
'Liberalism' arouses 'Fascism' arouses 'Liberalism'....
You want to dam it up - but whoa to all when the dam breaks. Instead concentrate on physical coexistence and release mechanisms that will delaminate and disintegrate the philosophical tides that buffet us all.
OH bull hockey.
Moral liberals seek to encourage immoral and unwise behaviors and protect individuals from the natural consequences of their own immoral behavior. Conservatives often fail to oppose such protections, but instead seek to enforce artificial consequences for certain types of immoral behavior. What libertarians want is for people who engage in immoral or unwise behaviors to suffer the natural consequences of their own actions.
A kid who is told not to touch the hot stove, and is punished every time his mother sees him try it is unlikely to learn not to touch the hot stove. Instead he'll learn not to touch the hot stove when Mother is around. What will teach the kid not to touch the hot stove, period, is trying to do so. It's not Mother that makes the kid's hand hurt when he touches the stove. Rather, the pain is a direct and natural consequence of the action.
Conservatives and libertarians both believe that people should act morally. The disagreement is generally focused on how to attain that end.
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