I wouldn’t put it quite like that. Most libertarians believe that private discrimination shouldn’t be illegal, but many find it abhorrent and advocate discouraging it with non-coercive pressures like boycotts and social shunning.
I’ve got another question though, despite whatever theoretical backgrounds the parties are supposed to have don’t those who have said they would vote republican evaluate, y’know, actual competence.
Surely all the shit the republicans have done up to know should count against them? You can call Hillary and Obama a lot of things but corrupt doesn’t seem to be one of them.
I don’t understand it either. I was a libertarian Republican in the 80’s, but I abandoned the party during Bush’s father’s administration because it became apparent to me then that Republican libertarianism was merely rhetorical cover for plutocracy and corporatism.
(I’ve since abandoned liberatarianism itself as well because as much as I admire the IDEALS of libertarianism, I don’t think it’s a workable ideology for the real world. But that’s another story … .)
Yes, I would say a considerable amount of people don’t care what the government does so long as they keep their money.
Clearly, the libertarians are somewhat confused and disorganized, unless they can adopt the rigid ideological constraints and ruthless organization of the Democrats, its hard to see how they can have a lot of impact.
Are they? Who has the most influence in the WH – religious rightists or libertarians?
(Answer, of course: Neither. It’s the corporations and business interests. And in close second place are the neocons – an elite faction of academics and theorists and think-tankers with no mass base of support. But religious rightists definitely have more influence than libertarians. This pattern probably holds true in the House and Senate Republican Caucuses as well.)
Yeah, that’s a better way of putting it. I almost changed what I wrote because it could have been interpreted to mean private discrimination = good, whereas libertarians generally think it just shouldn’t be illegal. I certainly wouldn’t patronize a restaurant that excluded Blacks, for example, but I wouldn’t force that restaurant owner to serve Blacks if he chose not to.
There is no difference between Republicans and Democrats when it comes to competence or corruption. They’re both equally incompetent and corrupt. Now, you could make a good case that the Bush Administration is more incompetent than usual, but Bush Administration != Republicans. And frankly, both Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi strike me as being wholly incompetent.
Furthermore, after being in power for only a few months, the Democrats have fallen right into the pattern left by the Republicans - opposing limits on pork, fighting earmark reform… John Murtha was just censured for threatening to block a Republican’s own spending projects unless the Republican toed the line with Murtha’s own desire to spend money.
Corruption in Washington isn’t partisan.
And in opposition to John Mace, I still think that the natural home for Libertarians is on the right. The left is simply far too intrusive for my tastes, and their type of intrusion is much more politically palatable to the general population and therefore more dangerous. Most of the restrictions in liberty that I’ve seen in the past 20 years have come from the left - hate speech laws, smoking bans, here in Canada the Gun Registry, increasing nanny-stateism (it’s now illegal for an adult to ride a bicycle without a helmet), mandatory recycling laws, the ‘fairness doctrine’, campus speech codes, rent controls, and the list goes on.
Here in Canada, the province that consistently ranks much higher than all the others in just about every aspect of personal and economic liberty is Alberta - the one the with the most right-wing population and a government that has been conservative for decades. When the NDP (a left-wing party) took power in Ontario, freedom declined. Taxes went up, rent controls came in, a host of new restrictive laws were enacted, and the government stuck its face into many formerly-private areas.
And while the extreme members of the Republican party may want to force kids to pray in school and ban abortion, the extreme members of Democratic Party are outright socialists who favor huge intrusions of the government into many aspects of our private lives. They like people like Castro and Hugo Chavez.
Futhermore, the current crop of Democrats are becoming increasingly populist - that was news in the last election cycle. Democratic rhetoric is turning back to the anti-globalization, pro-union, protectionist, class warfare rhetoric of 30 years ago. John Edwards and his ‘two Americas’ is leading that particular charge, and several prominant Democratic victories in the last election were achieved by populist candidates.
And while Bush is no Libertarian, he’s not going to be around much longer.
Libertarians tend to be a theoretical bunch, though. And some libertarians might celebrate incompetent governance since it supports the tenet that most government = bad. Maybe that’s a way to convince people that smaller government = good, or at least less bad.
First time I’ve heard anyone say that. What do you base it on?
But I didn’t use “right” or “left” on purpose. There are many Democrats whom I’d characterize as neither right nor left, but a reasonable mix of the two. And it’s not some hypothetical Republican or Democratic party that we have to align with, but the real, extant parties running today.
Very few Democrats are advocating the types of crushing taxes we had a generation or two ago, and there are plenty of Democrats who understand that globalization isn’t something you can fight and win.
Let’s look at the actual distribution of political views among the American people, as determined by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press in its political typology study. You will see there are nine identified groupings and none corresponds exactly in its views to libertarianism, big or small “L,” although the Enterprisers come closest. The Enterprisers form 9% of the adult population and 10% of registered voters. That’s it. That’s the maximum vote base the Libertarians might win under ideal conditions. Just to put this in its proper perspective.
That makes little sense. All the Pew Report tells you is that the way they segregated groups of people didn’t include a split down Libertarian lines. You’ll note that the group called ‘upbeats’ is only 5% Democrat, is pro-business, pro-immigration, pro-American, and has a favorable view of government (since Republicans are running it). That’s 13% of registered voters. Then there are the ‘disaffecteds’ of which only 2% vote democrat. They don’t like immigration, but they also think government is wasteful and inefficient. That’s another 10% of registered voters.
Frankly, I think the Pew Report fairly accurately describes how people have aligned themselves politically in response to the Bush Administration and the war in Iraq. For example, a defining characteristic of Liberals today is that 90% of them think that military force is wrong, and 88% of them think that government is getting too involved in issues of morality. Yet, when Clinton was in power they had no problem with military interventions around the world, and they had no problem with government intruding in matters of morality when it was their morality the governent was acting on behalf of.
Anyway, there are only a few groups in their list that you could rightly say would have no libertarians in them at all - the Social Conservatives, the Pro-Government Conservatives, and the Disadvantaged Democrats. That’s 33% of the population with very little in the way of any libertarian tendencies. All the other groups believe that the government is too intrusive or incompetent or both in at least one major area that affects them. The Liberals are probably fourth in their lack of affinity with Libertarianism, so even if we take them out of the mix that leaves exactly 50% of the population who are at least reachable by sensible libertarian arguments.
Besides, it’s possible to change people’s minds. No matter what people believe today and how they align themselves, that could change tomorrow.
I wouldn’t be so sure. If the administration had simply been a four year nightmare on a mistake in vote counting, I would agree with you. But the man was re-elected. The Republican congress let him get away with whatever the hell he wanted to (granted, the democrats aren’t doing a whole lot better). I’m willing to say his administration is now the republican party, and the rest of the members are going to have to try damned hard to change my impression.
Is it? I thought most people’s political views, like the rest of their personality, were pretty much fixed for life by their late 20s.
The Republican party is made up of several factions - there are the social conservatives, the libertarian Republicans, the corporatist Republicans, the populist Republicans… Or look at it this way - Bush’s popularity is in the low 30’s, which means that there is a significant chunk of Republicans who disapprove of him.
As for Congress rubber-stamping what he wants, that didn’t quite happen either. He’s had a reasonable number of Republican lawmakers split with him over a number of issues, from stem cell funding to steel tariffs to the war. Nonetheless, it’s true that if a Republican is in power the other Republicans will tend to rally around him, just as Democrats do. After all, Bill Clinton was a moderate Democrat who still got the support of the left - where else were they going to go?
This next election should do more to tell us who ‘real’ Republicans are - this is the first election since 2000 in which the Republicans didn’t have an incumbent to support, and the first in decades where they were free to choose a new candidate after having one of their own be president. Let’s see the direction they choose.
The Republicans of 1994 were far more Libertarian than Republicans are today. Back then, they wanted to abolish the Department of Education, defang the EPA, cut taxes, reform welfare, and roll back the Federal Register by 30% or more. They believed Reagan when he said that government was the problem, not the solution. And their ideas had enough traction with the publicn that even Bill Clinton declared that ‘the era of big government is over’.
Now that the field is open again, we’ll see if those Republicans can gain any traction. My fear is that BOTH parties are moving towards a more statist position.
I’d say that’s true for a significant chunk of the population, but there’s an equally large chunk (the ones who pay attention) whose beliefs are modified by what they learn through their lives. I know mine have, and I’m sure yours have as well. The Neo-Cons, for example, are generally defined as people who were once liberal or even socialist who changed their views and became Republicans.
When I was younger, in my early-mid 20’s, I was much more of a hardcore libertarian. Now, my views have been moderated somewhat by experience and more education in economics. I’m still firmly in the ‘government is best that governs least’ camp, but I’m more willing now to recognize the limits of the market and the necessity for some regulation in keeping the market working efficiently and keeping the population from becoming too disaffected.
And I noticed you posted a thread critical of Chavez, which shows that you’re willing to modify your position when facts come to light as well.
Which is where you’re wrong. The government is best which is the most just.
Please note: I do not suggest that the best government is the most efficient. Egalitarian democracy is the most cumbersome and least efficient form any government can take, it is all about compromise. But it is the most just, as much as humanly possible, we want to make the government an expression of ourselves, in all our diverse incarnations. If the government is, finally, an expression of the will of the people, it makes no real difference whether that government is large, small, or middlin’.
There are large issues amongst us, issues too large to be dealt with in piecemeal, local initiatives. The kind of libertarianism you describe would be a glorious windfall for the haves, and a jolly good rogering for the have-not. It reflects the values of a pre-New Deal aristocracy, who preferred to keep government out of such messy matters as labor law, industrial regulation, etc. Keep government “off the back of business”, leaving them free to practice social darwinism on their fellow citizens.
The essential weakness of libertarianism it shares with Marxism: it is a hot-house plant, a poltical philosophy cooked up in the abstract, without the messy and irrational fertility of actual human interaction. Mostly, it just sounds good to people who don’t want to face unpleasant choices, who wish to delude themselves that they need not choose the lesser evil, when that is frequently the only choice we get, and we neglect our duty if we refuse to make it.
It is fairly said that you can’t get five Democrats to agree on what the Dems should stand for. But is it not demonstrated herein that you can’t get two libertarians to make the same agreement?
I’m not sure what kind you mean, but there’s no reason to “keep government out” of labor, industry, or anything else if that thing is coercive. It is a fallacy to equate libertarianism with robber baron capitalism, just as it is a fallacy to equate democracy with mob rule. Pre-Hoover capitalism was in fact the exact opposite of keeping out; government kept decidedly IN, partnering with wealthy tycoons in the exercise of eminent domain and special legislation and regulation that favored one business over another and business in general over private property. In fact, it’s pretty much the same thing post-Hoover.
Excellent points. I would also add that the potential for abuse is worse now than it was before the New Deal because now the major economic players are corporations, not individuals. A robber baron, however greedy and heartless he might have been, was still a human being possessing a moral sense. Corporations, because of their distributed control, feel no pity or remorse over their actions.
As I pointed out just above your post, any reference to robber barons is random. Robber barons profited by strongarming people into doing business with them, not just with economic pressure but with everything from coercive legislation to murderous thugs, all of which government enabled either directly or by turning a blind eye. Every tycoon had a Senator in his pocket.