Replies

The main difference between Conservatives and Libertarians is the mindset. May be a simplistic assessment; but, bear with me.

Conservatives are largely motivated by morality. The same morality which penned our Bill of Rights and constitution.
That morality demands the things that live in those documents because they are moral issues, not just sound bytes that give warm fuzzies and make people feel good.
Conservatives believe in small government as a moral perogative that led them to write it out on paper and seal it as a founding principle of this nation.

Libertarians, on the other hand, tend to believe what they do - because. The because is largely because a piece of paper gives them reason to believe they have a right. A piece of paper, not a moral compass. Thus they mistake the right to act for the legality to do so. Not quite the same thing. You have a right to go out and murder someone. It is undeniable. You possess the right to make the cognative and physical movement to go out and act on your whims. Laws and governments exist to constrain us from making decisions that are morally and ethically wrong and otherwise unacceptable. So while you may have the right to make decisions and act on them, we the people have the right to hold you responsible. And that's the crux. Libertarians don't like that idea any more than Liberals do.
And they are selective arbitrarily in displaying it. Libertarians want drugs legalized because it infringes their presumed rights to be dopers. We the people have restrained them through laws because we have found drug use to be morally and ethically wrong and otherwise unacceptable.

I'm speaking in general terms; but, that is the underlying issue. The mindset. Liberals have the same problem - they are largely led by desire rather than a moral compass. Their belief system is largely constructed on what they can abuse out of a piece of paper and wrap around something they decide they want to do while trying to convince people with polls that we all accept it.

Conservatives believe in the document and the moral and theistic mindset that demanded the document. Liberals and libertarians believe in what they can sell you the document could say or would say if only the founders had been alive in our time when pot exists and after women started going topless on beaches. Problem is, women had breasts when the founders were alive and have had them for a long long time. And Pot didn't just leap from the jungles in modern times. There were drugs in their day too. And the people that used them went to prison for doing things they shouldn't just as happens today. Imagine that.

Libertarians and Liberals will not be constrained by conscience, morality, or a document. And if not for sophistry, more people would know what they actually believe instead of the spin they have to put on their beliefs to try and make them pallettable. Thus they say "pro-choice" instead of Pro-Baby killer. If you can murder a child to escape responsibility for it and convince a woman it's not wrong to do so, then it makes it easier to get by with sleeping with anything that moves and directing your attentions to trying to convince everyone that's ok and it's judgemental to tell a man he can't sleep with the man's daughter unless he marries her and stays married to her. Good lord, there's them morals again. I'd better stop while I'm being moral...