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Obviously the existence of utilitarianism and pragmatism, as well as the individual "pursuit of happiness" so long as you do not materially harm anyone else has never crossed your radar.

Oh but it has, many times. I used to think that way myself.

But it is becoming increasingly difficult for me to believe that there is some kind of hermetic seal between a mythical "self-sufficient individual" and the rest of society. And it is becoming increasingly clear to me that lines of thinking which declare "society does not exist" are a kind of cultural Bolshevism that are every bit as destructive of society as the Marxist variety. If the libertine line of reasoning were truly valid, we should not have seen so many disasterous results from the destruction of traditional Western values and norms.

Of course I am sympathetic to small, limited government. But small, limited governments work best with a moral society of individuals who do not think of themselves as social atoms who can do whatever they want with impunity because they do not believe their actions have any effect on others. Small government works best with a moral society which is not afraid to enforce its values, with laws as well as with customs.

It is no accident that moral corruption and Big Government go hand-in-hand; the two feed off each other. This is the one fact the libertines fail to grasp. They also fail to demonstrate how a society is supposed to reform itself without resort to the State or its laws.

The best mere "voluntary action" can hope for in a libertine notion of politics is to create pockets of resistance, powerless to affect or reform an increasingly corrupt State, and thus ultimately doomed to be swept aside by those who are not afraid to use the State for their own purposes. This is an inevitable result of the rejection of politics, and is indicative of why conservatives and libertarians so consistently lose ground politically, in spite of many aparent political victories (that ultimately prove to be illusory).

Unfortunately the social and political thinking and writings that are at the core of Western values and traditions are a closed book to most who take the libertine line of reasoning at face value. They simply are not aware that these things exist. And thus Western Civilization passes away, for wont of enough people who are consciously aware of the need to perpetuate it, and who are aware of the means of doing so.

People might be suprised to know that I take a libertarian position on many issues, or at least consider the libertarian solution as sometimes a viable alternative to existing policies.

For example, I believe that our current "war on drugs" is insane, and certain parts of it (asset seizure, for instance) are invitations to corruption and abuse of power. I also would not reject all calls for legalization of some drugs, or for legalization of prostitution or pornography, in certain circumstances.

What I object to is the absolutist notion that what an individual does to himself has no effect on others, and therefore should not be subject to legislation, and that the State and the laws have no role in the moral education of the people

Such a line of reasoning leads to where we are today, and where we are going tomorrow, if it is not reversed.

This absolutist thinking is derived from a desire by libertarians to put certain political questions "beyond the bounds of acceptable political debate" - in other words, to trump and to silence those who do not agree with them.

Libertarians and conservatives would get along together if we could get over this tendency to try to avoid politics by "trumping" the opposition with absolutist stances on what are in fact political questions validly open to public debate.

The founding fathers never imagined that their attempts to place rational limits on the powers of government would be taken to an extreme whereby the moral and social efficacy of the State would be rejected out of hand.

I believe that questions of personal morality - drugs, abortion, prostitution, pornography, etc - are genuine political questions that need to be addressed, not mere personal matters which are beyond the bounds of politics. I think that we may very well find in some cases that a libertarian solution to a particular political question might be the best solution - but only if this is decided in a genuine political process, whereby the libertarians convince a majority that they are right.

Doing an end-run around politics by declaring certain issues to be "personal" and therefore off limits, is no different from the way that liberals have misused the Supreme Court to do an end-run around legitimate democratic politics, to get what they wanted but were not willing to defend in public debate.

"It is no accident that moral corruption and Big Government go hand-in-hand; the two feed off each other. This is the one fact the libertines fail to grasp. They also fail to demonstrate how a society is supposed to reform itself without resort to the State or its laws."

1. I don't think virtue is something that can or ought to be enforced by coercive law. I don't think that virtue should be created at the point of a gun, and moreover I have yet to see any example of where an attack through the law does anything to further a moral society. All I see is long history of well intentioned acts that lead a. to further corruption b. to the punishment of otherwise law abiding small fry c. failed miserably in the creation of a more virtuous state. Where I was raised, one does not reinforce failure.
If you could not really destroy alcoholism, something much easier to control than pornography ( in terms of means of production, distribution, and use), how on earth can you pretend that any attempt to do so would do anythign other than 1. create a porn black market 2. provide organized crime an even more lucrative venue 3. send poor, stupid people to prison in disproportionate numbers (making them poorer, stupider, and more likely to be angry and useless) while the already wealthy and powerful only become more so illegitimately.

2. The problem of our decaying culture is one created by the big-government, no personal responsability, no family respect mentality put forth in the last 100 years. The solution is to reverse the trends of big government and socialist intervention, not expand them further by legislating thought crimes.

3. And while we are casting blame about, the biggest problem conservatives have is that they fail to see the inconsistency between the stance on the balance of power between private individuals and government that most conservatives have on political and economic issues with their views on social issues. Central planning is bad bad bad and doesn't work in the long run...until it comes to promoting your religious/anti-homosexual/anti-whatever agenda. Then suddenly it becomes an effective and desirable tool for what we want to accomplish, a just and moral society.

Please note that this is not intended as an endorsement of anti-religious or pro-homosexual agendas. Merely that the means that we seek to change social mores should be consistent with those with which we seek to change economic or political mores...maximum power to the individual in a culture of personal responsability for one's own condition. And I definitely think that political/economic-focused socializers are a much larger threat to individual rights than any social conservatism could be, since the latter is nowadays a mostly defensive movement. I do think it is this inconsistency which is often the liberals most effective pr tool against us, and with good reason.