This is anecdotal, Damuri, but it might help assure you that the LP wasn’t coopted.
In the early-mid nineites I became interested in Libertarianism. I agreed with them far more than Democrats or Republicans, even though I didn’t agree with everything. Still, the LP came closer to expressing my “live and let live” attitude better than anything else offered, so I joined.
In the late nineties I was the founding chair of a local LP party. At that time, our local group had huge discussions over the national party’s pro-choice plank. In my state, typically conservative, the happened to be more than half of our local group who disagredd with this pro-choice plank. One reason is that the LP was promoting itself as the “Party of Personal Responsibility.” Some of thought this was inconsistent with abortion as birth control. None of us felt a woman should have to bear a child as the result of rape or when her health was endangered. But if we’re gonna market ourselves under “Personal Responsibility,” we felt, we should say something about the irresponsibility of indiscriminate sex without birth control and then asking for someone else (taxpayers) to pay for it. Irresponsible all around.
We went round and round about this and had to agree to disagree. There was one area wherein we did not disagree–we were all united in the “no taxpayer funded” abortion angle. We contacted the national party about this, networked with other state and local groups, and found that other Libertarian groups were having the same conflict with the same results. Our next convention, the national plank got changed to simply being against the funding of abortion with tax dollars.
We didn’t get coopted. We simply modified our official position slightly due to increasing complaints of people who had long been Libertarians and didn’t wholly agree with the pro-choice plank.
While we are a party of choice, we are also a party of responsibility, as wella s a party of protecting those who can’t protect themselves; and sometimes the things can conflict. No political ideology is perfect.
His issue there is bad jurisprudence, not the effect of the bad jurisprudence. He doesn’t like the court switching what the fourth amendment means for something else, even though the something else might be good too, and even though the something else is closely related.
If the S. Ct. had held, “Under the ninth amendment, we find the people have a right to the use of birth control,” I doubt he’d be complaining. I wouldn’t.
Like I said, it’s an issue of does the end justify the means, not any desire to impose birth control restrictions on anyone.
Its been clearly demonstrated that the BigTime LP is opposed to the Right to Privacy and related freedom principles.
Its simply THEM though - not the LP. But go ahead and defend them. Just don’t pretend the Constitution is on their side. Griswold exposed their true roots.
The We the People Act would not exempt cases decided using the 9th Amendment. It simply states that the people of the United States have no right to sue in a federal court when they are assaulted and kidnapped by state government employees for lawful actions such as having sex, using a contraceptive, or praying.
In 1960’s America there was no real incentive to allow blacks at the lunch counter or anywhere else. There were more racists than blacks and the blacks couldn’t afford to spend as much as the racists. It made sense to be a white only establishment in many cases. It almost never made sense to exclude whites.
So if I think something is murder then the government shouldn’t be allowed to fund it? I don’t think that is the stance at all. I think the Libertarian party has drawn an especially bright line on the funding of abortion where they have not drawn lines elsewhere.
You are presuming a level of individual mobility that has never existed AND you are ignoring the tyranny of the majority.
We used to have this with abortions and the result wasn’t a mass migration of people from pro-choice states to pro-life states or vice versa, the result was back alley abortions.
A simple majority imposed their social agenda on the minority. This is not how our democracy is supposed to work where human rights are concerned. Either the woman’s right to abortion is greater or the fetuses right to life is greater and a popular vote doesn’t answer that question.
You still do not understand, Linden, and that’s the only clear thing you have shown us.
Now check this out:
Let’s say you are a promoter of activity X and activity X becomes illegal. Someone takes it to the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court rules “Activity X is protected activity because there are little green aliens on Mars who say so,” and that is their best reasoning in law that htey provide.
Now let’s say that activity X is something good and wholesome that you approve of. Let’s say, however that you believe what little green aliens on Marsthink has no business in American jurisprudence. You protest this decision, becuase you’re worried about what else the Supreme COurt might let little green Aliens from Mars decide; even though you’re happy the decision safeguards Activity X. You loudly decry the decision in the case.
Next people who are in favor of Activity X criticize you for not supporting Activity X. Is this accurate or fair?
OK, so you are saying that funding abortion is a bit different than funding say the death penalty or wars because we are not funding the result of someone else’s individual choices (as opposed to policy choices) so if you are irresponsible and you get pregnant and can’t afford an abortion then we will not pay for an abortion so that the baby ends up with an irresponsible parent that can’t even afford an abortion?
I am generally against second trimenster and very much against third trimester abortion because of concerns about the rights of the fetus but I am not at all concerned about the notion that people are using abortion as a method of birth control. Perhaps if there were better documentation of women using abortion as birth control I would change my position but all the empirical evidence points the other way with nothing but anecdotal evidence that abortion as birth control is a significnt issue.
I was a bit of a Libertarian in college too because the 50K foot level view looked good but when you got into the weeds you found yourself crawling around on your belly with snakes. I still support capitalisma nd free market principles but so do both of the major parties in thsi country. I was republican for most of my adult life until they jumped the shark and now I cannot see voting Republican again unless the Republican party gets off its current trajectory.
What current government policy funds a citizen’s action that some people construe as murder, other than abortion? Of course, in Libertaria, the government wouldn’t fund anyone’s medical care, so it’s really a non-issue.
Only for a small segment of our society.
The “vote”, popular or otherwise, answers every question in a democracy. It’s a polite fiction that certain things are above the vote, but nothing is in a democracy.
No. I was illustrating how that plank came about. The reason for the plank wasn’t that we wanted to single out abortion. The reason for the plank is that the LP was facing not just minor disagreement over a platform plank, but experiencing a major division over the issue of abortion. Non-taxpayer funding of abortion was the only thing all of us could agree on about abortion.
As far as the responsibility issues you complain of, I’d say that such an irresponsible person needs some help. But there’s a big difference in recognizing that and demanding that people who think abortion is murder in all cases contribute to that by paying for it.
Cite. If the documentation is poor on the reasons women get abortions (as I’d expect in an issue involving private medical records) I don’t see where you’re getting your “empirical evidence” from. Nor was I aware that you have to state a reason for getting an abortion, seem I have believed that you could get an abortion on demand.