Posted on 03/22/2015 7:55:18 AM PDT by CHRISTIAN DIARIST
A friend sent me a link to a newspaper column celebrating the supposed ascendance of libertarianism among the hoi polloi.
“It is clear,” the author wrote, “that there are certain areas where an increasing portion of Americans are adapting more libertarian views and simply want the government to leave them alone and allow them to freely live their lives.”
He cited as examples same-sex marriage and drug legalization. “People have generally come to the conclusion,” he asserted, “that they don’t really care to whom one is attracted or what consenting adults do behind closed doors.” He also predicted that “the next libertarian wave to wash across the national consciousness will be drug legalization.”
Where “the prohibitionist” errs, he asserted, is in “the failure to recognize that since one owns the right to his own life, his body is as much his property, if not more so, than the clothes he wears or the change in his pocket, and he is free to utilize it as he sees fit.”
Well, I do no dispute that support has increased in recent years for both homosexual marriage and decriminalization of drug use. The polls suggests as much. But that doesn’t make it right.
For the Word of God declares: “Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness.”
Indeed, there is a libertarian argument to be made for seemingly every evil under the sun.
Take pedophilia: The North American Man/Boy Love Association (NAMBLA) group thinks there nothing wrong with a grown man being sexual attracted to a pre-pubescent boy.
In fact, the main goal of the pedophile rights group, which was headed for years by libertarian Joe Powers, is to “repeal age of consent laws that make it a crime for adults to have sex with minors.”
We see a similar move to “normalize” polygamy; to confer upon such multi-spouse unions the same right to marry as homosexual couples. The movement was given a huge boost last year by a federal district court judge in Utah who ruled that the state’s law banning polygamous households violated the First and Fourteenth Amendments.
The legal challenge was brought by the polygamous “family” featured on the TLC reality show “Sister Wives.” Parents magazine, which should not be mistaken as pro-family, finds the show “very redeeming.” Perhaps the best part of the show, according to Parents, is “its subtle Libertarian message.”
Not even incest is out of bounds for libertarians. Just last year, in fact, the German Ethics Council, a government body, recommended that the country’s laws banning incest between adult brothers and sisters should be abolished.
“The fundamental right of adult siblings to sexual self-determination,” trumps “the abstract idea of protection of the family,” the council declared. That line of reasoning expressed “a libertarian ideal of sexual autonomy,” noted The Week magazine.
The same kind of unGodly reasoning informs prevailing libertarian views on such issues as abortion, euthanasia, drugs and prostitution – that our bodies are our property and we can do with them what we will.
Indeed, Murray Rothbard, who according to the Blackwell Encyclopaedia of Political Thought played a leading intellectual role in the development of modern libertarianism, said that if a mother-to-be decides she doesn’t want the human life growing in her womb, “then the fetus becomes a parasitic ‘invader’ of her person, and the mother has the perfect right to expel this invader from her domain.”
Jack Kevorkian, the proponent of physician-assisted suicide who sent more than 100 souls to an early grave, never pronounced himself a “libertarian,” but he certainly was embraced by the libertarian community. That included Mary J. Ruwart, a leading candidate for the 2008 Libertarian Party presidential nomination, who actually contacted Kevorkian in 1993 to assist her sister Martie to take her life. “Martie was a person for whom Dr. Kevorkian really was the only option,” said sister Mary.
The libertarian Cato Institute is one of the foremost advocates of drug legalization, not just for marijuana, but any every and every drug.
Indeed, in 1999 testimony to Congress, Cato’s David Boaz argued that “(t)he long federal experiment in prohibition of marijuana, cocaine, heroin and other drugs has given us unprecedented crime and corruption combined with a manifest failure to stop the use of drugs or reduce their availability to crime.”
But libertarian Boaz and other drug-legalization advocates don’t get it. “Drugs like marijuana and cocaine are not dangerous because they are illegal,” as Joe Califano, the one time chairman of the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University, explained. “They are illegal because they are dangerous.”
That is borne out by data from the Centers for Disease Control, which indicates that deaths from drug overdoses have risen steadily over the past two decades. Among people 25 to 64 years old, drug overdoses actually cause more deaths than motor vehicle crashes.
The libertarian case for legal prostitution also is morally bankrupt. It is based on the notion that sex for money is a “victimless crime;” that a woman should be free to sell her body without government meddling.
Never mind a study from the Netherlands, where prostitution is legal, which reported that 60 percent of women in legal prostitution had been physically assaulted and 40 percent had been coerced into legal prostitution. Kill our unborn babies. Take our own lives. Enslave ourselves to drugs. Sell and buy sex. All that is okay under tenets of libertarianism.
But the Word of God says different.
“Do you not know,” the Apostle Paul wrote to the Christian faithful in Corinth, “that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own?”
Indeed, we were all, everyone, bought at a price. And, therefore, we are to glorify God in body and spirit.
Because all political views are a subset of religious views.
By "it" I guess you mean governments outlawing, for instance, abortion and sodomy.
I think I probably agree with Joe, but only as far as it relates to the U.S. Constitution.
Then (Amendment X), "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
So, when certain States outlawed those evil practices, the federal government was specifically prohibited from standing in their way, much less stopping them, without first amending the U.S. Constitution to get that power.
But, as we all know, that train left the station many decades ago. Thus, I support the Convention of States.
The federal government also has to make laws and rules for itself in regards to abortion and marriage, and always has, going back to the writing of the constitution.
Libertarianism is not about federal law only anyway, libertarians have the same leftist agenda, period.
Whether the libertarian is currently a Mayor, or city councilman, or governor or whatever, he is a libertarian, and passing contracts and laws promoting homosexuality and abortion “liberty”, drugs, porn, etc., and opposing and striving to overcome conservatism.
Christianity, Libertarianism, the Constitution and lets throw in Obamacare. They almost seem like 4 unrelated topics.
Would you rather live in a country where abortion is legal, 10% of the population uses marijuana, people engage in all kinds of bizarre sexual behavior and the government seeks to control every aspect of your lives backed by 17 trillion in Chinese debt or live in a country where abortion is legal, 10% of the population uses marijuana, people engage in all kinds of bizarre sexual behavior and the government largely leaves you alone and runs on a small balanced budget?
If you honestly believe you can, at this point eliminate abortion, either legal or illegal and eliminate drug use, legal or illegal and eliminate non-heterosexual behavior, legal or illegal, you have formed your opinion in lieu of the obvious experience of the last forty years.
I wish no one used drugs, killed babies or missed the joys of traditional marriage but the world does not bend to my wishes often.
Libertarianism and liberalism gave us the America you just described, and libertarians are fighting to move the GOP farther to the left.
And here you are, still fighting for abortion, drugs, and gay marriage.
If you don’t like them, then switch to being a conservative.
A Christian or American that votes for a politician who believes that abortion and gay marriage are rights, is deeply confused.
To walk out of church and then vote against the conservative to represent you in government, and instead vote for the pro-abortion/proporn/progay marriage/etc libertarian to represent you and decide American law and culture and society, is absurd.
Uh huh, and step-by-step, what exactly are you going to do to return things to 1953? Please be detailed.
You can’t blame libertarians for the state of things today. Libertarians would never have allowed the abject violation of the 9th and 10th amendment which has allowed the metastatic growth of the Federal government. A libertarian government would have allowed each state to decide things like school prayer, school curricula, or school lunches. The founding principle of libertarianism and only real rule is to never initiate force against another. Instead of Row v Wade, a legislative identification of human life beginning a the beginning would have dealt with abortion.
I honestly believe there is a bit of a romantic view of what America used to be. To believe that there was no abortion, drug abuse or sexual depravity in 1953 is to be blind to obvious realities. No cultural problems that concerns you have been ameliorated by an over-arching, expensive, intrusive, menacing and growing government.
Please be detailed?
I oppose the left and libertarians, and support conservatives and conservatism.
You libertarians and liberals have had incredible success for the last 50 years, and have created a cesspool, and made us ashamed of American culture, and you want more of it.
No, not true. True libertarians protect the individual. True libertarians do not allow murder.
The “libertarians” that support abortion do not understand the foundational premises of libertarianism.
Nonsense and dishonest.
True libertarians support abortion and always have.
You can claim that they misunderstand their own position, but you should quit pretending that it isn’t their position.
Abortion and gay marriage, and already they have given indications of supporting child porn.
Eric Cartman libertarians (Whatevah, I’ll do what I want) mistakenly believe that the fetus is at the disposal of the mother.
The libertarian measuring stick should be: Will my actions necessarily impose on another person’s ability to pursuit my goals? In the case of abortion, this is a definite yes.
That is absolute poppycock. The true libertarian position would eschew government sanction of any marriage, and leave it a religious ceremony.
Now, what Libertarians are doing, may be a different story. But any rudimentary understanding of basic libertarian philosophy would not allow abortion, child porn, or government license to marry.
LOL, libertarians are not religious and they want anyone and everyone to be able to marry, and you are being silly if you think that marriage law will cease to exist in America, or anywhere else, Thomas Jefferson had a marriage license, George Washington had a legal marriage and paid for his favorite nephew’s license.
“Sexual orientation, preference, gender, or gender identity should have no impact on the government’s treatment of individuals, such as in current marriage, child custody, adoption, immigration or military service laws.”
Abortion:
“ we believe that government should be kept out of the matter, leaving the question to each person for their conscientious consideration.”
And if you want to see the early indications of libertarianism’s position on child porn, just ask.
I think there is a fundamental issue regarding the definition of libertarian that exists.
I am as hard core as they come as a Conservative.
Ansell and I have been back and forth many times on this issue and I respect and agree with HIS positions. I don’t agree, fundamentally, with Ansell’s definition of libertarian.
I wouldn’t allow him to put my in the “libertarian” box of the libertarian party.
I don’t support, nor will I ever support the “Libertarian party” as it stands.
Historically, we Conservatives where once considered Liberals, radicals.
"If you analyze it I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism. I think conservatism is really a misnomer just as liberalism is a misnomer for the liberals — if we were back in the days of the Revolution, so-called conservatives today would be the Liberals and the liberals would be the Tories. The basis of conservatism is a desire for less government interference or less centralized authority or more individual freedom and this is a pretty general description also of what libertarianism is."
How are your efforts working for you? Did you make a lot of progress in the last forty years or did you just get a bigger, badder government? Be honest.
If this is an example of your best work I have to say, your work sucks.
Libertarianism doesn’t need a prominent politician, it is a corroding factor as it supports the left on social issues and fights to move the GOP to the left, and of course the Warren Court which has been hailed for it’s libertarianism.
That is why Reagan was a conservative and not a libertarian, and why even while running for the presidency and being interviewed by libertarians in 1975, he tried to win them over to conservatism, and told them how he was a social conservative and strong on defense.
Reagan was no libertarian, that is why the best election libertarians ever had, was against Reagan, in 1980.
We all know what it means when someone says that a politician is becoming more libertarian on social issues, or that the GOP needs to become libertarian on social issues, or that young republicans are becoming more "libertarian", etc, etc. The libertarian party is a perfect political platform of the libertarian philosophy, that is why libertarians created it. Libertarianism opposes conservatism. If you don't support the party's platform, even if you don't vote for them, then you aren't a true libertarian.
We have legal abortion, gay marriage creep, sexual deviancy, plus big big govt, a super surveillance state, massive corruption in govt, high high high taxes, dismantling of the Constitution, and no true representation.. now...and this all happened under Democrats and Republicans, there never has been a Libertarian party or President in power.
Hello.
BRB.
I’m not a teen, what does that mean?
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