Home Forums Miscellaneous Topics Second Amendment Is the Libertarian View Valid?

In my heart I lean toward Libertarianism. I like the idea of a very limited government. I think the federal government should be more limited than state governments. Though I haven't decided everything that should happen at each level of government, they all sould repeal about 70% (or more) of the laws on the books. I think our various levels of government should be focused on keeping foreign and domestic enemies at bay and safeguarding individual freedom.

However, I fully recognize the concept of a truly Libertarian society requires people to be mature and decent to each other. This just isn't the way the world is or has ever been. A good example is use of cell phones while driving. People should have enough common sense to know how big a distraction a cell phone can be while driving. They should make every effort to overcome that distraction by using a headset, a speaker system, or focusing more on driving than talking. However, most don't and it creates dangerous situations. People should have enough sense not to drink and drive, to wear their seatbelts, to not leave infants unattended in a car, etc. However, many people do not apply common sense to these things so laws are passed.

So is the Libertarian View a type of government worth striving for or is it just an unrealistic pipe dream? Is voting and supporting political conservatives and incrementally trying to undo our current state of over regulation the best we can do? Do we lose more by seperating ourselves into a group that will never achieve enough political power to have any effect, or by choosing the lesser of two evils with the political parties who can have an effect?

Blaine

Blaine, I guess I'm not the only one that mauls stuff like this over in my mind. The way I see it, alot of folks just don't have enough common sense or responsability to live totaly free of government interference. If I ever arrive at a reasonable conclusion, I'll let you know. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/tongue.gif" alt="" />

That being said, I'll tell you how I see it Others may or may not agree with my take. There is only one guy I can be responsable for, and I got to look him in the eye every morning to shave. In his heart, he believes that maturity and decency cannot be legislated, and any attempt to is wrong.

We have laws against driving while talking on cell phones, drinking & driving, leaving infants unattended, and on and on. Folks still do it. We also have laws against robbery and murder. Folks still do that too.

The only way to enforce all these laws on everyone equally, is constant supervision. Even though I do none of these things, the simple idea of "Big Brother" constantly peering over my shoulder leaves a hollow feeling in my chest. And I believe that all these unenforcable laws lead us in that direction.

Remeber that guy I said about being accountable to? I just cannot go on voting for someone I don't like, trust or agree with, just because the other choice is worse yet. If I do, he keeps me up at night.

I guess I realize it's a no win situation, but after all, I've still got to shave.
7mm

Maybe a little allowed "Darwinism" would work?

Government has a job...to protect the civil liberties of the individual citizen from the depredations of the Bigs...Big Government, Big Labor, Big Green, Big Business, Big Education, Big Crooks and Big Religion.
I probably forgot a couple...the whole idea is to prevent the consolidation of unaccountable political or economic power. Once an entity is so large as to be able to take unfair advantage, it will.
The Darwinism part would be great...we had a version of it here in MT for a long time...no speed limits. You didn't drive stupid in Montana for long before finding yourself off a cliff or in a river sometime soon.
It had a benefit. Most drivers drive the numbers on the sign. Long-time Montanans drive the road and learn to read it. The newcomers? Hah.
We should replace all traffic laws with one -- Driving While Stupid. Get three of them and you can't drive for two years, unless of course you kill yourself once out of the three.

Blaine, what is today called "libertartianism" was originally called liberalism (today many say "classical liberalism"). Classical liberalism is the economic and governmental system/theory/philosophy that developed starting in the 18th Century, i.e., the 1700s. It was the system for liberty adopted by the Founding Fathers, was the cause of the American war for independance and our system of government. It's primary early theorists were Locke and Montesquieu (I recommend you read them both). It became fully developed in the 19th Century, and was the cause of the spread of liberty in many European nations.



Gradually, however, the Leftists stole the name of "liberal," and the true liberals started calling themselves conservatives and/or libertarians. I should comment though that classical liberalism and modern libertarianism are political and economic philosophies, whereas conservatism is most accurately described as an orientation of the mind, i.e., the belief that free society had a complex organic development, and if messed with by social engineers, it will be utterly destroyed, and will require at least another thousand years to re-acqure, if indeed it is even possible to re-acquire it. Keep in mind that the vast majority of human history has been characterized by a small class of Nobles forcing their collective wills on the rest of humanity who lived in squalor and constant fear (under tyranny), and that liberty marks only a very small part of human history. It may well have been a fluke, never again to re-emerge once destroyed.



Conservatism basically says that we like the free society which resulted from 18th and 19th Century liberalism (which, itself, rested on many centuries of previous development), so don't mess with the institutions that have developed as a result, because that would be like chopping down a huge oak tree, and trying to re-assemble it in a different manner, according to your liking (i.e., The tree will die). Classical liberalism and modern libertarianism are not the same as conservatism, but rather a well developed philosophy of government and economics. And YES, it works very well indeed, as proved by the unique status we have so long enjoyed in the world as the best place to live. Nowhere in the world has true liberalism been more influential on the way a people live and govern themselves than in the United States of America, and it shows in 200 years of liberty and prosperity.



Gradually, however, starting in the early 20th Century, the Leftists stole the name liberal, and have been implementing Statism/Socialism little by little, and our freedoms are gradually being eroded. Classical liberalism is being replaced with its opposite, and too few are educated enough to know the difference. I agree with the Conservatives in that I am persuaded that once the oak tree is chopped down, you will not be able simply to put it back together again once the leftist expiment has proved disasterous (which it has everywhere it has been tried). We will have to start from scratch with an acorn. Liberal society and government was an organic development in Western civilization, and cannot be simply re-engineered at will. Way too complicated for that. There is enough of the tree still standing and living that we can still stop its total destruction, but we are nearing a point of no return, in my opinion. Once the original tree of liberty has been completely chopped down, so that no remnant survives in the world, it will not be possible to nurse it back to health and vigor, anymore than you can restore the tree to life which was used to build a row of park benches.



P.S. It is too little appreciated that Conservatism is an essential component of Classical Liberalism. It was the view of the Classical Liberal thinkers that social change through government should be very slow and difficult, and that established institutions must be preserved from rapid change as a result of legislation (They never suspected that the Supreme Court would ever become a vehicle for rapid and extreme social alterations). Classical liberals were also conservatives, in other words. This is why our Constitution was written in such a way as to be very difficult to alter. Passage of legislation is intentionally very ineffecient in the United States (or at least that was the intent of the Founding Fathers), because of the many checks and balances built into the system. The president was not given the power to plunge us into war, preferring that Congress have that sole power, realizing that, due to that body's inefficiency, wars would only be entered into if the great majority of Americans were in favor of it (today, of course, the president may plunge the nation into war at will). The national government has only limited power to alter our society (or, at least that was the plan), as its powers are few and enumerated, and do not deal with anything of much import to local society.



These are all conservative components to the Constitution. It is important that you not confuse true Conservatism with modern Republican politics. Modern Republicans are best characterized as moderate socialists/statists, not as Conservatives, even if there are still a few Conservatives here and there in the Republican Party.

And with all these millions of laws and ordinances, people still do stupid things.

Its inevitable. Probably 98% of all legislation is passed with never any intent of preventing a mishap, or protecting the populus.

They are passed as part of the scheme of revenue enhancement for the governing body. Government produces nothing, its sources of cash to survive are taxes, fees, and fines. Quite often literally stolen in a manner that would lock you or I up for fraud if we attempted to deceive in a similar mannor.

Case in point, my home town. My home town's "main" street coinsidentally is also a section of a U.S. Route. There have been parking meters on this street for as long as I can recall. A while back, a well to do lawyer decide to fight his parking ticket. He won. Being a U.S. Route superceded the municipality's right to install the parking meters. Since the municipality had no jurisdiction, the parking ticket was illegaly issued, and the case was dismissed.

To this day, the meters are still on this street, monies are collected from them, tickets are issued, fines are paid by unsuspecting unknowing motorists.

Part of the reason they do not know? The decision was sealed by the court.

A fraud is committed everyday in my town. Parties have conspired to prevent the truth from being divulge to the masses. All in the name of revenue.

Sounds like corruption, fraud and racketeering if it were you or I. Should we not hold our governments to the same standard?

No, no, a thousand times no!

"Mankind is basically good" is the fundamental tenet of left liberalism, not of libertarianism! Libertarianism could be argued to be based on that passage from Jeremiah: "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked." Libertarians understand that people are naturally corrupt, which is why it is always (always) a losing proposition to give them coercive government power over others.

In a libertarian society, individuals would be ultimately responsible for any injury, damage, or other violation of the rights of others that they caused. Most if not all of the restrictions on what you could do while driving would be imposed by insurance companies, not governments. (Furthermore, the various government-sponsored immunities from and limits on litigation that insurance companies now enjoy would be gone.)

Insurance companies, you see, are the logical ones to make such rules, because they actually have a stake in the effectiveness of the rules, and are therefore motivated to make rules that really work. Politicians have no stake in the effectiveness of traffic laws, and are motivated only by how many votes they think they can get from their target constituency.

In a libertarian society, driving drunk or talking on a cell phone while driving would probably not be illegal. After all, it's not a violation of anyone's rights. However, your insurance policy would probably state in big red letters that any property or civil damages or criminal penalties incurred while intoxicated or distracted would not be covered; and if you did violate somebody else's rights, any demonstrable intoxication or distraction would undoubtedly be considered during sentencing.

Look at it this way: any assertion you make that in the real world people are not mature or decent to each other is susceptible to the following challenge: then why would you want them to rule you?

Barak makes a great point. In a free society, tort and criminal law is how irresponsible individual conduct is dealt with, not "prior restraint" laws, such as those banning the carry or ownership of firearms. Prior restraint laws presume a guilty mind and an evil intent, while our traditional laws (developed when we were a far more libertarian/classically liberal society) presumed innocence till guilt was proved. Laws based on prior restraint are characteristic of parternalistic societies (e.g., Communist societies), not free ones. In a free society, all are presumed to be responsible for their own conduct, and only when their behaviors demonstrably disrespect the rights of others does society (i.e., the law) step in to hold that person accountable.



Now, you might ask, "If our laws should presume an innocent mind, how then can you say that Classical Liberalism presumed that each man is a potential tyrant?" Different situation. That presumption is based on the axiom "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely" (Lord Acton). Corruption (evil intent) is only a problem when people have great power to do harm, such as that possessed by the "Nobility" of prior centuries and most government officials today. Our system, however, was originally designed to place very little power in the hands of any small number of individuals, and all power that must be given to government officials was checked and limited by other institutions and branches of government. Our system, however, has largely been undermined by the leftists/statists of the 20th and 21st centuries, falsely calling themselves "liberals". Our mission is largely one of restoration, not experimentation. Authentic liberalism has already been tried and has universally enjoyed unprecedented success. Never perfectly, but the closer any nation has approximated it, the better that nation has prospered under liberty.

Yeah, Barak sure DID get that one right, and so did you Hawk on prior restraint.
One, there are a lot of venal scumbags out there, and no number of laws will ever make them good. That's what guns are for and why it's not a good idea to take them from the good guys. At the least, you can march the scumbag to the slammer.
Then comes prior restraint. Like I said, we didn't have a speed limit in Montana for a long time. I thought it was great to be able to rely on my own judgement, and I survived its evolution.
Now we have prior restraint -- restrained down to the limits set by a little old lady in a Delta 88 with no shocks, bald tires on glare ice with coffee between her legs. The limits on main roads are set foolishly low to the point where people drive the number in a howling blizzard and THEN wonder how they got caught in a flaming 600 car pileup?
I beleive we should be able to make choices, and yes, be held accountable for the consequences. Making good choices begets more, to where it becomes second nature for all members (should I say surviving) of society. But what happens if all the choices are made for you...and when the time comes that there's a decision to make that hasn't been legislated or whatever...making the right, rational, and I would say ETHICAL decision becomes a crapshoot.
Vicious circle, that.
Finally, about the Tree of Liberty. In this global society, it is crazy to expect that another great experiment in human freedom will come along after America. We developed from that "acorn" in isolation. If it hadn't been for distance and time and space, all of which are now nonexistent in the historical sense of the words, we would never have gotten away with what we have done. If we lose our freedoms, that's it for the world, for all those other people who deserve to have at least a dream of liberty, if not liberty in practice.
Hmmmph.

While I agree that the federal government should be smaller, and oversteps it Constitutional bounds, I do not believe that the Libertarian view is valid.

That view is too near anarchy to be effective. It is a view that as long as I don't hurt anyone else it is my right to do as I please.

On the surface that seems valid. However, whether something hurts/affects others is often not as clear as they would make it.
Prostitution is not a victimless crime. In addition, the moral views of the society and individuals do in fact impact others. Sometimes all others.

To accept immorality in the form of sex, drugs, or whatever else you want to name, is harmful to the society.
The attitudes toward abortion present a callousness toward the value of human life, and the approval of the failure to be responsible for your actions. It is the claim of the Libertarians that they believe each should be responsible for his actions. However, the attitude that one can have sex and then not accept the consequences when pregnancies occur contradicts the Libertarian claim.

The Libertarian claims that morality is not the responsibility of the government. The ignore the fact that murder, stealing, etc are moral issues.

The laws of a society reflect the values of that society. The law is a great teacher, although only one part of the lessons that should be presented in a society. The other legs are home, church, and schools plus peer pressure.

Any claim that the government is not to teach moral values, and the schools are not to teach them, but that the home and church are the places that moral values should be taught ignores a very basic fact.
MANY homes do not have much in the area of correct moral values. They are too often homes of a single parent who has become a parent through immoral sexual activity. The home is therefore of little help.
Those families do not usually attend a church. The church then cannot teach morality to those people. We would be abandoned those people to their enviornment. It is a bad evil environment.

Accordingly, it is absolutely necessary that the government pass laws which deal with moral values.
Consider the subject of homosexuality which is in the news much these days.

If a child grows up in a society where the law says that homosexuality is an acceptable lifestyle, and to discriminate against homosexuals is a crime, and the schools teach that it is a natural lifestyle, and there is no stigma in society against homosexuality, that child will grow up with a warped view of the morality of homosexuality, and has a greater chance of participation in it.

It will be the opposite if the government says that it is wrong and illegal, the schools teach that sexual immorality is wrong, and if the society ostracizes active homosexuals, then that child will have a different view of homosexuality.

The degradation of the morals of this society have adversely impacted all of us in one way or another.
Or lack of proper moral values is reflected it the results. School shootings, parents and children killing one another, rapes, violence, diseases that are transmitted by drugs and sex, fear of walking the street after dark in so many parts of all cities, and the lack of respect for others are all manifestations of our moral decadence. Just look at some of the logos on tee shirts, and the language on TV and movies. In my youth one would have been thrown out of a home where he visited and used vulgar or cursing language. Now most invite it into their home in the name of entertainment.

The Libertarian view goes along with much of the problem, although they deny that they approve of it. But that is not enough. A nation must provide an atmosphere which furthers righteousness and seeks to halt unrighteousness. Today, none of the political parties is perfect. However, on balance the Republican party has the MORAL high ground. That is the primary reason I am a Republican. We will never get it exactly right because we are imperfect humans, but we must try.

Before you ask me, I will tell you that the absolutes for the determination of proper morality are found in the Holy Bible. It was the basis for our views in the early days of our nation, and on which we built a great nation. Sadly, as we depart from those absolutes, the nation becomes poorer in liberty and justice.

Proverbs 14:34 ��Righteousness exalteth a nation: but sin is a reproach to any people.

Jerry

Guys,

This is an excellent discussion!

Blaine

I'm not sure how to respond to you, Jerry. What if the Tao or Talmud or Confucious or Koran was all we had to go on? Not all, just one of those? Do you really want to be a Muslim. What if the government that took on that moral role you speak of was Muslim? You wouldn't like that at all, same as any other believer doesn't want their belief system forcibly imposed.
That said, religion has a critical role to play in a society in that it provides people with freely-accepted bounds of acceptable behavior.
The Jews made their dietary laws for a good reason -- no refrigeration. Trichinosis was a bad deal, and guzzling down unpasteurized milk wasn't so smart either.
So there was some practical stuff in there to keep the good guys alive.
Never mind STD's in pre-drug days. Bacchanlia would have killed off the population in no time, leading to invasions from healthy nations.
The reason for all the brimstone talk was simple...with an all-seeing God up there in the absence of cops, there wasn't a need for a huge gummint. The weekly guilt-trip on Sunday worked...for a long time.
Okay, now lets go to an atheistic nation where the theorists decided to kill the church and replace it with Father State. USSR. The state controlled behavior so completely that subjects never had a chance to develop skills of individual self-government, self-restraint. The repression was so pervasive it developed to the point where if someone could do a crime, no matter how petty, they would -- simply to prove to themselves they were still humans and not automatons.
When the Soviet Union went belly-up, this nation without a moral compass went totally bonkers...but there has also been a resurgence in religion, and Russia and all the spinoffs (well, most anyway) seem to be finding their way with a little bit of a moral compass.
However, when you get down to the dirt here in America, I would never willingly accept moral guidance from government. That is for society at large acting as parents and fellow citizens.
My parents hardly ever went to church or temple (I'm a mutt), but they managed to inculcate me with a sense of right or wrong that needs no reinforcement. The state could never have done that.
Finally, the Texas decision. I feel it was the right one. Just like government should stay the hell out of our gun rooms, it should stay the ($*^&# out of our bedrooms. That said, I do not support a societal legitimation of "gay marriage." That's not what marriage is for, not how biology is designed to work. Period.
If two froots want to make a life partnership among themselves, fine. If they can find a private employer willing to insure the "partner" and hand over such private-sector benefits that normal married couples get...well, fine. But spousal Social Security benefits? Nah.
Bottom line is I don't think gays et al should be persecuted, nor do I feel they should be supported. Leave 'em alone -- in return, they are expected to leave the rest of us alone.

Dave,
[I'm not sure how to respond to you, Jerry. What if the Tao or Talmud or Confucious or Koran was all we had to go on?]

But it isn�t. This nation was founded by Christians, and was basically a Christian nation for most of our history. While I doubt that most of those who were here were truly born again believers, they did ascribe to the moral and ethical values contained in the Bible.
In some nations they only have other religions. We have been commanded to carry the gospel of Christ throughout the world. Without it they are lost eternally.

Because we have been blessed by having the truth, God�s Word, we built our laws basically on that truth. We have never been perfect, but as a nation we have believed in the moral absolutes of the Bible.

[However, when you get down to the dirt here in America, I would never willingly accept moral guidance from government. That is for society at large acting as parents and fellow citizens.]

In fact you do every day. Laws in general are bases upon moral principles. Some are very obvious, for example, murder, rape, and theft. Others are not so obvious, and some are not based upon morality. I again say that there are so many who did not, and do not, have the advantage of parents who have a good moral compass, and so they grow up without a conscience which normally helps individuals to do right. Today we have those who have not conscience. They murder without any feeling of guilt or remorse.
Laws must be bases upon moral values. However, those values must be the correct ones. Otherwise we have unjust and immoral laws, such as the Muslim countries, in general, do.

It is worth noting, that as far as I have ever known there is not one of the world's major religions which accepts homosexuality as normal or even tolerable.

[Finally, the Texas decision. I feel it was the right one. Just like government should stay the hell out of our gun rooms, it should stay the ($*^&# out of our bedrooms.]

Then would you approve of incest and the sexual abuse of minors? What about statutory rape? You would not. There is no right to have total freedom in our bedrooms. That right is only between husband and wife.

One other thought.
Earlier in history there were probably no STDs. Then there were such things such as syphilis, and others.
There is a built in consequence of sin. STDs are one of the consequences of sexual immorality. As mankind found cures for the diseases, God caused/loosed others. Now we have AIDS. It is not unusual for God to attempt to get man�s attention by degrees. If mankind will not respond it gets worse.
In time it will get worse than anyone can imagine.

Here is what God has revealed will happen because of the sinfulness of mankind, and their refusal to turn from it.
Revelation 16:8 And the fourth angel poured out his vial upon the sun; and power was given unto him to scorch men with fire.
9 And men were scorched with great heat, and blasphemed the name of God, which hath power over these plagues: and they repented not to give him glory.
10 And the fifth angel poured out his vial upon the seat of the beast; and his kingdom was full of darkness; and they gnawed their tongues for pain,
11 And blasphemed the God of heaven because of their pains and their sores, and repented not of their deeds.

The decision by the Supreme Court was a decision which furthers the moral degradation of this nation, and which will in time result in our destruction as a nation such as we know today.

As for persecution, I would not hunt them down and harm them. I would in fact go to the aid of anyone who was being attacked without cause. But if persecution means ostracizing known practicing homosexuals, then I would do that. If I had a business I would not hire one, and want nothing to do professionally or socially with one.

[Leave 'em alone -- in return, they are expected to leave the rest of us alone.]
The main problem here is that they do not leave us alone. They insist on the same special status as races do. They flaunt their filthy lifestyle, and that must be resisted by all legal means. They are determined to have their lifestyle declared to be normal and accepted, to include marriage. I will always resist and oppose such things.

Jerry

That's a paraphrase of the Non-Aggression Principle. To a first approximation, it's okay, but it's not exact; if you try to apply it rigorously to real-world situations, it'll cause you problems. There are times, under the NAP, when it is your right to hurt someone else.

Please don't dismiss anarchy quite so quickly. There are a number of very instructive philosophical aspects to anarchy that can help you "think outside the box." For example, why exactly do we need a state? What is it that the state can do that can't be done just as well or better by the free market? (Answer: it can legally use preemptive coercive force rather than persuasion. That's all.) Whoever said "Anarchy is chaos!" was a statist. I personally happen to think that anarchy is somewhat less than practical, but it is not chaos, and I have a tremendous amount of respect for it and for the folks who have spent time thinking about it and researching it.



If, given a particular act of prostitution, you can identify one or more victims who have demonstrably had their rights (life, liberty, property) violated, then libertarians would agree with you that those victims are entitled to some sort of relief.



Libertarians don't believe in "society" as a moral actor or subject. Only individuals are capable of moral or immoral action, and only individuals can be acted upon morally or immorally. We also hold that subjective beliefs cannot violate anyone's rights: if rights are to be violated, they must be violated by action, which may or may not spring from any given set of moral beliefs.



Here I'm afraid you have things slightly askew.

Libertarians go much further than claiming that morality is not the responsibility of the government. We don't even stop at saying that the government cannot possibly have any positive effect on morality. We go all the way to the claim that the government is, unavoidably and in all cases, the enemy of morality: law destroys moral choice.

And we support that claim by observing that morality--true morality--involves an individual's free-will choice to conform himself to a particular abstract moral standard, frequently to his own immediate disadvantage. Law, on the other hand, externally influences a decision to follow or not follow a particular course of action for the purposes of self-preservation. One who makes a decision not to hire a prostitute in a state other than Nevada is not making a noble moral choice: he's making a crass, selfish choice. (Or at the very least, there is no way he can prove to anyone--including himself--otherwise.)

Law destroys morality. Morality is good; we want to destroy as little of it as possible: therefore, we want as few laws as possible. Can we get rid of all laws and proceed on the basis of morality alone? No, we can't, because not all people are moral. Therefore, libertarians believe that we should have some laws, but only in cases involving the clear violation of another's rights. If there is no victim, then there can be no just law. That's why libertarians support laws against murder and stealing: because they violate others' rights to life, liberty, and/or property, not because they're morally wrong.



On the contrary, the law (at least as it exists today) is an exquisitely lousy teacher. It teaches that the government has life-or-death power over its subjects at a whim, rather than the other way around. It teaches that one can depend on others, rather than oneself, to ensure one's safety and success. It teaches that doing the wrong thing can be okay if you can get out of it by exploiting a loophole in the law. And it teaches that those who have money, resources, and power can get away with more than those who don't.

But we agree about the other legs.



Agreed. But how did it get that way? Can you guess what I'm going to say? Government is how it got that way. The government extorts resources from the successful and hands them out to the unsuccessful. The government punishes folks who make hiring/firing decisions based on employees' moral choices. The government refuses to protect the rights of unborn babies, thus further rewarding irresponsible activity. The government has arranged things so that one does not need to be responsible or moral or pay attention to one's children to survive or even to succeed; therefore, many aren't and don't.

Government created this problem, and more government can only make it worse, not better. Abandoning those people to their environment, as you say, is the best thing that could possibly be done for them--at least from a government perspective. If they can convince people that they're worth taking a chance on, then private charities and individuals may choose to help them. They have no right to other people's time or money, and it's time both they and we understood that.



Look: I believe that sex should be restricted to within (traditional) marriage. Why? Well, okay, because the Bible says so. But I think it goes deeper than that. I think the Bible says so because that's the way God designed us to operate optimally. Deviations from that are suboptimal; we can discover that either by reading the Bible or by trying it out for ourselves and observing the result (or, preferably, by observing the result when others try it for themselves). We absolutely do not need the government to tell us how we ought to be conducting our personal relationships. (Just think of the amount of information the government would have to have about everybody to fairly enforce an anti-sodomy law, and how many enforcement personnel it would take, and how much it would cost!)

On the one hand, if Judeo-Christian marriage is really better than all the alternatives, it should be able to naturally-select itself to the top of the heap without government help. On the other hand, government has so thoroughly screwed up Judeo-Christian marriage so far through no-fault divorce and apallingly stupid family-law bungling that I think it's pretty important to get it out of the picture before it destroys it completely.



All of that is caused by government, and can't be solved by government.

School shootings happen because schoolchildren have no discipline, and they have no discipline because school discipline has been effectively outlawed by the government.

Children killing parents happens (are you ready?) because children have no discipline, and they have no discipline because family discipline has effectively been outlawed by the government.

Parents (and step-parents, and temporary boyfriends, etc.) killing children happens because the government has made children disposable meal tickets.

Sexually-transmitted diseases are rampant because the government has taken away all the natural God-given incentives against promiscuity and irresponsibility.

Diseases are frequently passed by drug needles because the government has outlawed the white-market sale of drug paraphernalia by folks who might provide cheap, sterile equipment.

Rapes and violence and fear of walking the streets at night only happens because the government has guaranteed street goblins a steady supply of hapless victims by outlawing the act of and the means to self defense.

Lack of respect for elders, or for others in general, flourishes because government anti-discrimination laws make people afraid to protest the lack of respect lest they be slapped with a lawsuit or even a criminal charge.

And for every scummy, unprincipled Democrat you can name, I'll bet I can name you at least one scummy, unprincipled Republican, starting with Abraham Lincoln. There is no moral high ground in government. (Nor should there be: if it exists at all, government should be regarded as a possibly unnecessary evil and looked on with distaste; those who participate--on purpose--in it should be avoided.)

Barak,
And your post contains the reason(s) that the Libertarian view is not valid, and will never be accepted by the mainstream.
Not much else for me to say.
Jerry

Barak,

Bravo, bravo!!!

The founders were not all Christians. That is why the Creator is refered to and not God or Christ. Check it out. Bob

Well said Barak. Someone once very wisely commented of government (i.e., the state) that it is, at its best, a necessary evil." Someone else wisely remarked that government (i.e., the state) makes for a very dangerous servant, but an intolerable master. I like the analogy to keeping a tiger to guard one's estate. Constantly checked, and kept in regular fear of his keepers (us), he (the government) will keep your estate safe from badly intentioned tresspassers, but, given half a chance, he is almost as likely to make a meal out of his keepers.



The early liberal thinkers were not clear on whether there was a difference between the state and government. More recently, we distinguish. Usually, however, government gives birth to the state, whether or not that was the original intention. The state is little more than a parasite on society, hardly different from the nobles of past centuries, or the Mafia today. Governments, on the other hand, are instituted, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, to secure for us and our posterity the blessings of liberty, i.e., the rights to life, liberty and the persuit of property/happiness.



Notice I said "the persuit of." Nobody has a right to property (including basic necessities), but only the right to persue them without interference, while not themselves interfering with the rights of others to do the same. The leftists have twisted this to mean that we have a right to HAVE various things, which naturally implies an obligation on the part of the rest of us to PROVIDE those things, via the income tax and wealth redistribution, for those who do not have them. Most Americans today are socialists/statists in their basic philosophy of government, and don't even know it. "Socialists are those other guys, not me."

Boy, they always say don't riff politics or religion in polite company, and here we are doing BOTH.
I don't really agree all that much with Barak's support of "anarchy," especially after seeing a fair number of circle A's running around Missoula last year. Not a society I'd wish to be part of.
I guess you could call me a "leave me the *^#$) alone" libertarian. Smoke all the pot you want, drink all you want, just don't operate heavy equipment around me or I'll kick your fanny, get you fired and tossed in the slam. Sleep with whatever ADULT you want, just don't stick me with the bill for your AIDS medication.
I suppose if everyone exercised their rights to life, liberty and property in a RESPONSIBLE manner there would be no need for government...but we humans tend to be venal, selfish nincompoops. And so are our "leaders."
Shoot, now my trigger finger itches.

Are you saying that no one has the right to OWN property or that no one has the right to OBTAIN property? There IS a difference. If no one has a right to OWN property you shouldn't have a problem with income tax or the redistribution of wealth by the government since if no one has a right to property then you have no right to what the government is taking from you and giving to someone else nor has there been a transgression of your rights since you didn't own what was taken in the first place. Unless of course your name is Nobody, whom you have stated has a right to property.

Perhaps a more complete explanation might be in order, just for the sake of clarity.