John Derbyshire (http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ZDY0YmJlZTVjMDU2MTQyODU3ODg0ZTMwZWFmZTFlNTI=)
A reader who, if not disgruntled, is certainly very far from being gruntled:
Mr. D ? As a 'young intellectual conservative' mulling over factions in the coming Big Conservative Brouhaha, I'm thinking of jumping the USS GOP in favor of the Libertarian party. 3 quick reasons
* It's ideologically coherent. Or, at least, built on a strong foundation of promoting individual liberty and, y'know, actually deferring to the Constitution.
* It's 'cool'. Libertarians are generally viewed as either uncompromising personal freedoms/open market zealots, or in the case of those just looking for a political party that justifies their bad behavior, party animals.
Although, if Sarah were to defect to the Libertarian Party ?Not gonna happen.
[For more on libertarianism, check out my recommendation (http://www.olimu.com/webjournalism/2006/Texts/LibertarianismInOneCountry.htm) that libertarians take a leaf from Stalin's book.]
| Moreover, as economist Tim Leonard points out, progressives believed in a "powerful, centralized state, conceiving of government as the best means for promoting the social good," a belief that directly contributed to the widespread progressive support for eugenics, racial collectivism, and various coercive "reforms." Progressive darling Theodore Roosevelt, for instance, held notoriously racist and imperialist views, including the notion of "race suicide," which held that the white race faced the risk of being out bred by its "little brown brothers." He also believed that the 15th Amendment should never have been ratified since the black race, in his words, was "two hundred thousand years behind" the white. In opposition to all that stood libertarians like Moorfield Storey, the great lawyer and activist who helped found both the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the Anti-Imperialist League. A proponent of the gold standard and laissez-faire economics, Storey argued and won the NAACP's first victory before the Supreme Court, a 1917 decision that relied on a defense of property rights to squash a residential segregation law. |
| Given the Brooks analysis, here's the real problem for the Republicans: The Traditionalist defenders of capitalism wind up out of touch with America and grounded in rhetoric rather than political principle. Meanwhile, Reformers who want to "appeal more to Hispanics, independents and younger voters" have to abandon the small government model and become the conservative wing of the Democratic Party. None of that spells long term success for Republicans. What the GOP needs are libertarians, those who believe not only in small government, but also in individualism and the truly liberating power of free markets. If the Ron Paul movement tells us anything, it's that the Republican Party can be more than a party of old white guys with bad hair cuts. [...] A new conservative movement that takes libertarian ideas seriously could use the inertia created by the nation's new progressivism to slingshot itself into the future on a platform of reduced government, lower taxes, and limited interventionism, while also respecting climate change (adjusting the tax code to encourage green reform without any expense to taxpayers) and reforming the immigration system (opening the borders as the market demands labor without sacrificing security). The Republican Party has a chance to transform itself into something it has never been: a party of small government based on classical liberal principles. It doesn't have to be one of David Brooks' visions of the GOP. In fact, if the Republican Party wants to return to power it will recognize the flaws in both approaches, avoid them like Road Runner toying with Wile E. Coyote, and embrace libertarianism instead. |
Um, yeah, if you don't notice that they keep changing the definition of "individual liberty" to accommodate whatever particular hobby-horse they're riding today.....
The problem is, they never specifically define what they mean by "individual liberty". Absent a useful definition of liberty, I can take any side of an argument and argue it as the "pro-liberty" side. You want to be free of the exploitive capitalists, free of hunger, free of bourgeois cultural oppression? Vote communist!
In the case of the so-called modal, or life-style libertarians, liberty apparently means the American people are free to have everything they don't want shoved down their throats.
the problem with libertarianism is that no libertarian has ever proposed anything that would actually have the consequence of increasing anyone's liberty.
But if you fancy living in the kind of world the Reason and Cato crowd promotes, you might as well just vote for an honest socialist. That would be the practical consequences of their policies, anyway.
the problem with libertarianism is that no libertarian has ever proposed anything that would actually have the consequence of increasing anyone's liberty.
More nonsense. This sort of dismissive wishful thinking is bogus. This is sort of like saying if we get rid of Prohibition we'll just be giving in to the drunkards and our society will become a nation of drunkards. The general idea is not to make a reasoned argument, but to simply try to scare people into shunning without thinking. Not to mention the fact that the quoted statement above is historically untrue.
If he hands you a thick disk of something brown and tells you it's a giant chocolate cookie, it's probably just adult male bovine excrement.[/color]
A fine article, and already posted. Derbyshire has it right, of course.
It's a perfect time for them to push hard, get their message out and start building their base for 2012.
But if you fancy living in the kind of world the Reason and Cato crowd promotes, you might as well just vote for an honest socialist. That would be the practical consequences of their policies, anyway.
Yes, because smaller government and increased protection of property rights is (not to any thinking person) indistinguishable from larger government that owns everything. Allowing people liberty, Religious Dick would apparently have you know, is the same as tyranny. "Freedom is slavery" is apparently his message. And given his attempt to scare people into dismissing libertarianism without thought, I can only conclude he also thinks "ignorance is strength". Can "war is peace" be far behind? The one promoting something that looks a lot like socialism is Religious Dick. He's playing a game of misdirection and deception. If he hands you a thick disk of something brown and tells you it's a giant chocolate cookie, it's probably just adult male bovine excrement.
True as far as this , but observe the tight ship that Obama ran to acheive his election, do Libertarians plan and exicute massive organisation like that?
Strangely, most of the McCain supporters in this forum seemed to think that McCain was a better campaigner.
It was really unwise to stand up Letterman. I bet no one repeats that.
I thought McCain ran an uneven campaign.
That's it? That's your counterargument? Fear the immigrant because he's anti-gay? This does nothing to prove your point. I can post YouTube videos about immigration too:
Yes, we see.... (http://debategate.com/new3dhs/index.php?topic=8367.0)
I have no idea what Pink Hankie Libertarians are. I'm sure it some sort of childish insult, but I haven't the time to look up the meaning of your childish name calling.
Since when are the Pink Hankie Libertarians from Reason in favor of smaller government?
Recognizing that a more prosperous nation is more likely to have a larger government is not an endorsement of larger government. And arguing for a more pragmatic libertarianism is hardly an anti-nation argument. And somehow you moved suddenly from referring to "smaller government" to simply saying "government". More on that in a moment.
Apparently, their objection isn't so much to the government as it is to the nation (http://www.cato-unbound.org/2007/03/11/tyler-cowen/the-paradox-of-libertarianism/).
That particular article is about federalism, hardly a manifesto of imposing libertarian ideas on others. But you're making a common mistake. You've conflated the concept of a large and overbearing government with the concept of government period. And so when a libertarian who is not a complete anarchist, and/or calling for the end of all government now, says something about using government to protect the rights of individuals (a position that is in no way incompatible with libertarian ideas) you then claim they must not be advocates of smaller government. In the article to which you linked, Gillespie essentially argues for a smaller federal government with more choices made at the state and local level. And what is your half-baked assessment? "Ol' Pink Nick and the Gang seem to be perfectly fine with the government." Even a cursory examination of your arguments shows them to be shallow and little more than fearmongering propaganda.
When it comes to imposing their particular version of freedom, Ol' Pink Nick and the Gang seem to be perfectly fine with the government (https://www.reason.com/news/show/36756.html).
Normalcy according to whom? You? Are you the arbiter of normalcy? Is there some magical percentage of the populace that determines what is normal? And "unilateral disarmament of normalcy"? You say this as if there is some form of "normalcy" that should be imposed on everyone. You bitch about libertarians supposedly not having "ever proposed anything that would actually have the consequence of increasing anyone's liberty" but you do not appear to propose any sort of liberty at all. Any individual who disagrees with you politically you seem to believe to be a threat to some inanely romantic and rather collectivist notion of national unity. Your criticism of libertarianism is not only shallow and essentially baseless, it is also conspicuously hypocritical.
I notice one freedom they seem to be light on - the freedom of a people to political self-determination. Liberty, as defined by Reason, mostly amounts to unilateral disarmament of normalcy.
In what ways would the election of a Libertarian government result in greater liberty fo the people?
Being as the gasoline tax does not currently raise enough to maintain the roads we use, do you suppose that federal, state and local highways would be privatized and turned into toll roads which could charge whatever price they wished?
Nearly all of my property tax goes to pay for garbage pick up and public schools. If this tax is cut, how would schools and garbage pick up be paid for?
Yeah, sure, like vouchers are going to make teachers teach harder.
The fact is that Libertarians don't get the votes precisely because they have the attitude that "it will be ever so much better, but don't expect us to describe how it will actually WORK."
Once my radio stopped working. The tuner needle stopped moving when I spun the dial. I took it to Big Ed, an Electrical Engineer at the top of his class for a master's degree. Big Ed said "I don't do radios: I am not a hardware man". That's Libertarians for you: they are stuffed chock more full of theory then a Thanksgiving turkey, but they can't fix a thing.
When I was a child the government was less than half so big at all levels.
When you were a child the country had half as many people.
Could the thing shrink as slowly and inexorably as it grew?
In a word, no.
You will never see a shrinking government in the US.
Never.
The Depression of the Thirties did not cause the government to shrink. Nor did it shrink during the short periods between wars (1945-50, 1953-1960, 1976-1990, 1993-2001) There were minor wars in those gaps: Grenada, Panama, Somalia, Salvador and Nicaragua, Bosnia, and all sorts of interventions and smaller meddlings.
,
Perhaps if we actually were at peace for a serious period of time, we could get by with less growth in government.
I would count services as productive , even if the product is as ephemeral as saved time.
Saved time has a real cash value.
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It CAN have a cash value, but this is not always the case.
If you come home and make yourself a hamburger for $1.00 instead of buying one from McDonald's for $2.00, you have not gained anything of value unless you saved time by doing this, and used that time to earn money at a higher rate than the money "saved". My experience is that if I drive to a fast-food place, wait to be served, wait to pay and drive home, I have spent more time than I would have spent making the food myself. It is true that my fried chicken is not as good as the Colonel's, but my burgers are better and my tacos are the same in quality.
.01% of a population of 300,000,000 people is 30,000 people to serve in all state, local and federal positions. I hardly think you could run the army, the police, the courts, the DMV's and such with so few people.
A guy can dream can't he?
There must be a minimum nessacery government , and every approach to it is an improvement in that respect.
I have seen you maintain that if the US were less irritateing to other contries we would need less Army.
Well in that line of thinking , would we need less policeing internally if we simply respected each other more?
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That is also true. The US has more cops per capita than countries with lower crime rates. We somehow feel we need to have a much higher percentage of the population in jail as well.
Part of this is because the US has a much more diverse population than places like Denmark or Japan. Part of it is that Americans have many more weapons, and a higher percentage of people who have fought wars, which also leads to more violence. I am not sure, but I think the percentage of insane Americans is higher than the percentage of insane people in other counties. It is certainly true that the percentage of insane people off their meds is higher.