Posted on 07/31/2002 5:20:31 AM PDT by fporretto
Each abridgement of liberty has been used to justify further ones. Scholars of political systems have noted this repeatedly. The lesson is not lost on those whose agenda is total power. They perpetually strain to wedge the camel's nose into the tent, and not for the nose's sake.
Many a fine person will concede to you that "liberty is all very well in theory," follow that up with "but," and go on from there to tabulate aspects of life that, in his opinion, the voluntary actions of responsible persons interacting in freedom could never cope with. Oftentimes, free men and free markets have coped with his objections in the recent past, whether he knows it or not. You could point this out to him, provide references and footnotes, and still not overcome his resistance, for it does not depend on the specifics he cited.
His reluctance to embrace freedom is frequently based on fear, the power-monger's best friend.
Fantasist Robert Anton Wilson has written: "The State is based on threat." And so it is. After all, the State, no matter how structured, is a parasitic creature. It seizes our wealth and constrains our freedom, gives vague promises of performance in return, and then as often as not fails to deliver. No self-respecting people would tolerate such an institution if it did not regard the alternatives as worse.
The alternatives are seldom discussed in objective, unemotional terms. Sometimes they are worse, by my assessment, but why should you accept my word for it?
Let it be. The typical American, when he opts for State action over freedom, isn't acting on reasoned conviction, but on fear of a negative result. Sometimes the fear, which is frequently backed by a visceral revulsion, is so strong that no amount of counterevidence can dissolve it, including the abject failure of State action.
We've had a number of recent examples of this. To name only two prominent ones:
In either of the above cases, could we but take away the fear factor, there would be essentially no argument remaining.
Fear, like pain, can be useful. When it engenders caution, it can prolong life and preserve health. Conservatives in particular appreciate the value of caution. The conservative mindset is innately opposed to radical, destabilizing change, and history has proved such opposition to be wise.
However, a fear that nothing can dispel is a pure detriment to him who suffers it.
Generally, the antidote to fear is knowledge: logically sound arguments grounded in unshakable postulates and well buttressed by practical experience. Once one knows what brings a particular undesirable condition about, one has a chance of changing or averting it. The great challenge is to overcome fears so intense that they preclude a rational examination of the thing feared.
Where mainstream conservatives and libertarians part company is along the disjunction of their fears. The conservative tends to fear that, without State involvement in various social matters, the country and its norms would suffer unacceptably. Areas where such a fear applies include drug use, abortion, international trade, immigration, cultural matters, sexual behavior, and public deportment. The libertarian tends to fear the consequences of State involvement more greatly. He argues to the conservative that non-coercive ways of curbing the things he dislikes, ways that are free of statist hazards, should be investigated first, before turning to the police.
I call myself a libertarian, but I can't discount conservative fears in all cases -- especially where the libertarian approach to some social ill involves a major change to established ways. Radical transformations of society don't have a rosy history.
Yet conservatives, too, could be more realistic, and could show more confidence in the ideals they strive to defend. As Thomas Sowell has written in discussing the War On Drugs, "If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. Then quit. No use being a damned fool about it."
The past two decades, starting roughly with Ronald Reagan's ascent to national prominence, have laid the foundations for an enduring coalition between freedom-oriented libertarian thinkers and virtue-and-stability-oriented conservative thinkers. Each side needs to learn greater confidence in the other, if we are to establish the serious exchange of ideas and reservations, free of invective and dismissive rhetoric, as an ongoing process. Such confidence must include sufficient humility to allow for respect for the other side's fears -- for an unshakable confidence in one's own rightness is nearly always misplaced. There is little to learn from those who agree with you, whereas much may be learned from those who disagree.
I hope you both don't mind me waiting to reply until tomorrow. The missus and I are going out...but rest assured I will reply.
Cheers...p.s. what are both of you doing in front of a CPU on a *summer Saturday night*? We'll solve the world's problems tomorrow...HV
So what did?
How about after the first DUI, if you kill someone as a result of a DUI you can be prosecuted for a crime comparable in severity to 2nd degree murder. Sieze the car and then sieze the drivers license for a year for the first offense, sieze every vehicle the person owns the second time and ban them from driving for 5 years (plus 2-3 years in prison on a felony charge) and after the third offense put them in prison for 10 years and ban them for life from driving. If they get caught driving for anything other than a certifiable emergency or to get away from an attacker (or similar scenario) during a driving prohibition jump immediately to the punishment for the 3rd DUI. That's how you cut down on DUIs.
Sure there is. Reason is a mental process, that follows the rules of logic. The scientific method uses reason to determine the truth, or at least gage what is most likely the truth. That process is objective, if the reasoner(s) are honest.
Whether, or not, some transaction can be judged as objectively fair depends on having objective principles to gage the particulars in the transaction. Objective fairness occurs when 2, more more parties contract, or agree to some transaction in the abscence of fraud and coercion.
Equality is an exact term that denotes equivalence. When applied to social condition, it must be further qualified if it's to end up having an objective meaning. The only objective use of the term in social condition I can think of is if it's used to qualify oppotunity, or treatment under the law. That can only occur under a condition of Freedom that allows the individual to retain sovereignty of will.
"And once we arrive at what 'liberty' means, and you or I still dissent, how do we enforce the decision? Answer: force."
The only time the use of force is justified is to protect Life and rights. You certainly can't argue that the use of force to determine the meaning of anything is justified. What is suggested in this quote, is that the imposition of social order by force is somehow justified. Protecting Individual Life and sovereignty of will(Freedom) is the only objective justification for the use of force. That is because it allows each individual to retain his identity and nature(his essence). All other motivations for forceful action are a clash of wills that are a direct attempt to dominate the will of another individual.
Perhaps I can step in and defend my libertarian brethren here. The above strikes me as either a very confused caricature of their views, or a misunderstanding of basic libertarian philosophy.
I'll take it point by point:
Well, if you're a libertarian, there's no reason to ban polygamy, is there?
HV, you're okay so far. The libertarians of my acquaintance would agree one hundred percent. The heart of modern libertarianism is this simple thesis: the actions of consenting, rational adults should be their own business, unless those actions result in harm to others. If three or more people of sound mind and mature years choose to enter into a polygamous arrangement (can't quite call it "marriage" myself), they ought to be free to do so.
What if a guy has seven wives and 36 children, living paycheck to paycheck, and then he dies and the state gets stuck with supporting the children?
This is where HV's ratiocination begins to appear a bit frayed around the edges, I'm afraid. He began with "polygamy" and instantly conflated the issue with that of "polygamous parents".
Most libertarians I know are sharp enough to immediately draw that distinction. There is a profound difference, legally and philosophically, between being a childless spouse and being a parenting spouse.
Another party enters the social arrangement with the conception of a child. That party is a human person with certain irreducible protectable rights, or so would say nearly any randomly selected libertarian.
It is easy, and fairly stupid, to pick the most dubiously extreme argument that the looniest imaginable libertarian theorist might come up with, and parody it. (Liberals do this to conservatives all the time, and it's not any more fair or sensible a tactic when they resort to it.)
The majority of real-world, non-theoretical libertarians recognize that the world does not consist entirely of consenting, rational adults. The primary and obvious exceptions are children. And most real-world libertarians are prepared to admit that there must be measures in place to ensure the well-being of children who are subjected to the decisions of the adults around them.
I do know libertarians who are perfectly prepared to allow Christian Science parents to deny their children medical care unto the point of lethality. I don't know very many such libertarians. Perhaps one percent of the LBTs with whom I am familiar. Not a representative sampling.
So let us consider the case of some fellow who wishes to practice polygamy. That's between him and his, er, polyspouses, says the libertarian. Whatever they want to do with and to one another, so long as it stays consenting-adults-only, is okay.
But let us suppose that benevolent state of affairs changes, and the gentleman and his (whatevers) proceed to bear more children than they are capable of providing for in the event of his death.
Okay, now that is the point at which the sphere of rational-consenting-adult-contractors impinges on that of small persons who are not adults, who are not consenting parties to the arrangement into which they are born, and who don't have the means to leave it or seek legal redress on their own.
That is regulatable conduct, says modern libertarianism (a judgement with which I am in agreement). The nonsignatories introduced into the household contract, namely the children, have rights which may easily be invaded or abrogated by the adults who sired them.
Note that the case of a monogamous couple who have more children than they are able to handle is logically similar.
The key issue here isn't polygamy. The issue is whether adults can or should make provision for children's well being (regardless of the type of household arrangement from which those children are produced).
And believe it or not, libertarians worry and talk a lot about that exact issue, and have thought it through pretty well.
I have discussed the subject of children's care repeatedly with libertarian friends, and their general position has been that children are a protectable special case.
Kids need feeding, clothing, doctoring, housing, schooling, and love. Love is unfortunately beyond anyone's purview to regulate, but the rest reduce to financial matters: grub, overalls, medicine, roofs and books are all purchaseable commodities in a market economy. The only question is making sure that the arrangements are made and the bills get paid.
One way to handle the matter would be to simply require a prospective parent to show that he (or she, or they, or what have you) has made contractual advance provision for the care of his young.
An example would be a life insurance policy, of a nominal value sufficient to see one child through to maturity and independence. That would be wrapped in a binding trust, which stipulated who would control the money, and direct the child's rearing, in the event that the parent were to predecease the child's age of independence.
Simple. Clean. Contractual. Implemented via free-market agencies. Nongovernmental except for the requirement that the contract exist. Very libertarian.
There are issues beyond the parent becoming a decedent that need to be seen to, but most reasonably foreseeable problems can be handled in the same style, with advance planning and prior financial commitments.
In the straw-man case described above, in which Mr. Polygamy decides that he wishes to have more children than he is able to make provision for, he would find himself restrained from doing so, until such time as he (or his whatevers) could show sufficient means.
That would not be a case of the state contravening libertarian dogma by interfering with consenting adults. It would be a case of the state protecting the interests of persons who don't qualify as consenting adults. Very different to a libertarian.
Mr. Polygamy may do whatever odd and silly things he and his cohabitants desire to, so long as that children don't enter in. Once children do so enter in, the rules change.
Please don't construe the above as an argument on my part that there are no grounds on which polygamy could or should be prohibited. It was not my intention to argue that tack.
And I think that rational arguments against polygamy from a social-conservative viewpoint can and should be constructed. But the above is just a sloppy rabbit punch at imaginary libertarian views on the matter, nothing more.
I mean, if you're a libertarian why would you give any charity to these people because of their "voluntary" decisions?
There are plenty of reasons for a libertarian to give charity to people, even if those people are in a mess because of having made decisions which that particular libertarian might disagree with.
Pity, for example. Feelings of shared humanity. Religious imperatives (yes, Victoria, there are devout libertarians.)
For that matter, someone might make charitable provision simply because they found the sight of children on the street to be aesthetically distasteful.
For that matter, a conservative has equally good grounds to do the same. Or a liberal. Anyone, actually. People's reasons for being charitable, or not, do not map with especial fidelity onto their political orientation.
A libertarian would argue that he or she should not be forced involuntarily to provide such charity, which is a different matter.
I won't take up that contention, but will content myself from pointing out that again, there's a confusing conflation of cases occurring here.
But if you don't want to help such people, then either the state has to do it or they starve in the street.
My false-dichotomy detector is sounding. It is not a choice between A or B; there are other obvious options, the most obvious of which is that minimally intrusive policy, consistent with libertarian doctrine, can prevent the situation from occurring in the first place. If no wrong exists, no remedy is required.
You talk about things going on in the privacy of people's homes; what about people who beat their children? If you're an atheist, you believe that people are just material, not created by God, and thus the parents (the physical creators of the children) can do whatever they want with them. But if you believe that children are to be protected, to what moral standard do you appeal to take them away from their parents?
It's not my place to argue atheists' political and/or social views for them, but methinks that HV is being no more fair or accurate in his characterizations of their views than he has been with the libertarians.
I'll leave it to any atheists who might wander into the thread to rebut his presumptions.
Regards, MainStreet
When did "conservatives" ever support the kind of "civil liberties" like drug use, abortion, pornography, etc.?
When did "conservatives" start supporting draft evasion, desertion, and the abolishing of the Uniform Code Of Military Justice?
When did "conservatives" start calling for the end to immigration laws and the acceptance of all immigrants legal or not?
What "conservatives" do you know that call for an end to child labor laws?
It isn't authoritarian at all. If you are driving intoxicated on a controlled substance other than perhaps a medication like say Codein or something else that makes you drousy then you don't deserve sympathy. You have to force people to accept the consequences of their actions or you'll continue having a society where people get 5-10 DUIs before they get 1-2 years in prison.
Driving drunk or stoned is a potentially violent crime. The state has an obligation to punish it severely. We live in a society that is far and away too compassionate in its dealings with violent offenders. If you want to cut down on the problems associated with driving inebriated then you have to start cracking down on it harshly.
They aren't civil liberties. The libertarian and classical liberal approach is based on regulating rather than outright outlawing. We approach it from the tried-and-true angle of if you drive it underground you cannot control it because it is out of sight. Somethings like kiddie porn obviously have to go completely, but I think you get the idea. If drugs go underground the Pablo Escabars control its distribution, not the state. Same thing with abortion. It'll be done either in alleys or by doctors getting paid lump sums of $50-$200k per operation.
Victimless Crimes section a) the repeal of all laws prohibiting the production, sale, possession, or use of drugs, and of all medicinal prescription requirements for the purchase of vitamins, drugs, and similar substances;
War On Drugs section ) We call for the repeal of all laws establishing criminal or civil penalties for the use of drugs and of "anti-crime" measures restricting individual rights to be secure in our persons, homes, and property; limiting our rights to keep and bear arms; or vote.
"Regulating"?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.