If you take your comment to its next step, alcohol and cigarettes should be illegal.” I think there is a major theoretical problem with this view, even taken on its own terms. For starters, the answer about who decides is the people, seeking the answers in good faith through their elected representatives.

In what way is that theoretical?  Wouldn’t that be empirical?

Slippery slope arguments that ignore the actual historical record and the various ways that limiting principles prevented these “logical” reductio ad absurdums from coming to fruition strike me as unpersuasive.  So it’s empirical, but show me when and where the US ever banned cigarettes?  Explain why, if these social control things go on forever, prohibition was mercifully lifted.

James Burnham in his book “Suicide of the West” discusses the tendency of ideologues to exalt one value over all others. He gave the example of how one would rank liberty (in the sense of national independence), freedom, peace and justice in order of importance. A pacifist would always rank peace first; a socialist, equality; a libertarian, freedom, and so on. Burnham believed the conservative viewpoint is that the relative rank of these values cannot be fixed. Their relative importance depends on circumstances,e.g., liberty trumps peace, freedom and justice during time of war, peace may trump justice or liberty when faced with a powerful enemy. It is impossible for an ideologue to think in this matter. The emotional satisfaction the ideologue derives from applying his ideology to any matter at hand trumps reason and common sense.

It is modern day conservatism and liberalism which are “relativist” and “utopian”.  Both seek power to impose their ideology on others who disagree with them.  Libertarian and classical liberalism, on the other hand, is very pessimistic about human nature, which is why it lays down very few but firm rules on private property and individual rights, and leaves the rest to individual choice.

I think that Christopher Roach overestimates the extent t0 extent to which libertarians rely on a relativist view of morality. Certainly Murray Rothbard did not. Rather his position was that there is objective moral knowledge, but that force is justifiable only as a response to force or fraud. Mr. Roach refers to this view, or a variant of it, in his sentence, “And, moreover, even if there were some moral knowledge in any of these areas. . .”. (I’m not sure whether he intends this to be read as a counterfactual conditional)But he treats this as a side point when, to Rothbard,it is of prime importance.

Rothbard’s libertarianism allows for the small communities and common community values that Mr. Roach praises. People in his view are free to form communities in which the sale of pornography and dangerous drugs, e.g., aren’t allowed.

David, I realize there are variations.  Rothbard had his view.  Rand, though not a self-described libertarian, also had a similar view as to the threshold required for force and the morality of everyday life.  What’s missing from Rothbard’s and most libertarians view--it seems to me--is a proper account of youth, the mentally ill, the incompetent, and other folks who depend upon good habituation from the laws in order to develop into productive citizens, let alone virtuous ones. 

Furermore, it seems to me that in a country with free movement, local villages and towns are more akin to the voluntarily associated private communities envisioned by Rothbard. To call a fine from a city ordinance against being “drunk and disorderly” “Force” or “Violence” when it’s easy enough to pack up and move one town over is a bit of violence towards the natural meaning and pictures creates by those words.

As you imply, libertarians would do well to steer clear of a pseudo-libertarian (and pseudo-relativist) like J. S. Mill, whose determination to replace Christianity with a state secularist religion (based on Comte and Saint Simon) had nothing to do with either classical liberalism or relativistic ethics.

Yet another article on libertarians?  Are there really no more dragons to slay?  Have the neo-cons finally admitted defeat and gone home?  Is there really no greater evil that can be written about here than the dangers of the relativist arguments of the libertarians?

M.Nucci, neocons are bad, but so are Rockefeller Republicans, who rely on a kind of cracker barrel libertarianism to justify some real stupidities:  giving ground on abortion, gay marriage, and the death penalty, inter alia.  The relativist view that we can’t “legislate morality” underlies a great deal of bad policy in America today, and it’s outrage over this assault on traditional morality that gets many conservative voters to the polls.

This site, incidentally, is supposed to bring together conservatives who may sometimes disagree in order to have a discussion within a particular idiom.  Intra-conservative debates, and conservative discussisons of first principles, seem thoroughly valuable in that sense.

Mr. Gordon has it right. Mr. Roach does not seem to realize that many libertarians can and do arrive at the non-aggression principle by conceding an objective morality. He merely presumes that what he embraces as the objective morality, is, in fact, the genuine article.

That he goes on to conflate anti-statism with eschewing opprobrium and personal judgment, and suggests that the so-called “cosmopolitan” libertarians are a reasonable stand-in for libertarians as a whole, tells me that Mr. Roach would benefit from a more thorough exposure to libertarian philosophy.

I assume by “Rockefeller libertarians” you mean selectively libertarian, when focused on the non-economic sphere of life.  The Rocky libertarians were certainly economic interventionists.  It reminds me of Pierre Trudeau’s famous statement: “The state has no business in the bedrooms of the nation.” Trudeau then proceeded to use the state’s powers to interfere in all other spheres of life unrelated to the bedroom.

OK, Mike DiBaggio, et al., let’s get down to brass tacks:  Is polygamy wrong?  If so, why? 

Beyond the prohibition on force and fraud, what boundaries and considerations provide us guidance towards moral behavior in this sphere of life, once we meet the very low threshold of renouncing force as a tool to use?

I’ve never understood why any self-respecting person would adopt the self description “conservative”.

It means someone who is for the status quo, someone who hates change, and in that sense the vast majority of people are conservative, especially those who style themselves “progressive”.  After all they want more of the state and we already have plenty in that department.

“Liberal” on the other hand is the term to be proud of, except that its meaning has been devalued like the dollar. “Libertarian” is its second-best ersatz replacement.

One description that still stands is “radical for capitalism”.

Thanks, Ayn.

Roach opens up a big can of worms with the so-called “Fusionist” coalition. Look---it’s really simple. Libertarian is PURE moral and ethical relativism...basically anything goes.

Of course, the “conservative” Roach refuses to draw the distinction between economic behavior and personal behavior. Thus it’s all right according to “free market fundamentalists” for a CEO to loot his employees’ pension fund, and ship their jobs to Commie China, to earn himself a nice big golden parachute. But if 2 homosexuals want to get married---well, that’s a THREAT to our civilized order.

Get real. Both are connected.

@ Roach, Here we go again.  As I pointed out, and you ultimatley admitted, the “War on Drugs” was bad, not good because it didn’t accomplish its goals, it cost lots of money, and violated the Constitution. 

You previously wrote:

“Anyway, it’s not a question of institutionalizing the harmless.  It’s about institutionalizing the harmful for those things which we can find them guilty of.  I’d arrest these guys for having gold teeth, corn rows, and 25” rims if that were possible too.”

and

“I’d just as soon have dangerous, low IQ young minority men locked up on pretextual charges so that we don’t have to worry about them carjacking us or raping our daughters.”

You felt the drug laws were good because they resulted in people you didn’t like being locked up.  There are lots of antecedents for that in history.

My point was that USING DRUG LAWS as an excuse to lock people up was wrong----particularly when the Federal government was doing it.

You have seen the error of your ways and now you want to reframe the discussion, to suit your needs.  Fine.

To use your standard, SMOKING is “objectively bad” for you (and others if you buy second hand somek).  Yes or no:  Would you, in your “moral culture” outlaw it?  If not, why not? Drinking is also objectively bad for you (and others-drunk driving).  Would you outlaw that?  Why not?

For crying out loud, EATING BACON IS BAD FOR YOU.  Should that be illegal, too?

You apparently want to live in a country where everyone’s “morals” are exactly the same--to be decided by the majority.  That’s all well and good.  But it’s not the USofA.

You write, “Much libertarianism expresses a lack of confidence that a republican government can set up a legal regime to stop citizens from engaging in immoral and self-destructive behavior without devolving into an oppressive and meddlesome tyranny.”

Well written.  Then you digress to talk about how that wasn’t a problem in the 19th century.  Hey, Rip Van Winkle, we’re in the 21st century now!  The entire nation isn’t white or Christian!

In my view, that’s what has caused the breakdown in government, which now seeks to legislate morality, political correctness and all the rest of that dross. 

WHY WOULD ANY SANE PERSON WANT THE GOVERNMENT IN CHARGE OF LEGISLATING MORALS? 

The United States of America has a Bill of Rights.  You want to throw that out the window.

Pleae, please, please, move to Singapore.  You’d like it there.

@ CR, Also, for about the tenth time, I’m not a Libertarian.

Whoever described libertarianism as “applied autism” wasn’t far off the mark.

Using the drug war is a bad example. The issue in the “drug war” is not legalization, but decriminalization. Nobody wants to legalize drugs, they want to decriminalize it. From a practical standpoint, the
drug war has been as counterproductive as prohibition.

We don’t treat drunks as criminals, so neither should we treat those with a psychological
dependence on cocaine or maryjane as criminals. It has nothing to do with libertarianism vs
conservativism.

Well Mr.Roach you raise a good question, ‘is polygamy wrong.’ In my faith, yes it is wrong, but I would consider it very optimistic that the Catholic Church suddenly gets to decide for everyone else what is wrong.  That sword cuts both ways and I am not speaking hypothetically here.  The ex-governor of New York State sought to force Catholic Hospitals to perform abortions or face losing their charters.  Of course the fact that hospitals in New York State count on the State of New York for a charter is already an intrusion by the government into private health care that is unnecesary.

@ Kevin, Only for people who can’t think for themselves.  Don’t forget to lockstep

@ JP, Nice point.  Wish I’d said it.

Miss Cognate,

Since when is the word ‘Liberal’ an appellation of which one can be proud ?  It has always meant the negation of the established order and nothing else.  It is nothing more than a clever artifice for license and Communist tyranny.  It is not a principle but a solvent.  What civilisation, peace, and order are to Liberalism, Christ is to Antichrist, Chaos, and confusion.

Perhaps the only “fusionism” (a synthesis of libertarians and traditional conservatives) which ever had a chance was that envisaged by the Founders:  to permit states and communities to decide to allow or disallow school prayer and other issues of a specific moral nature.  But that was the late 18th c, when America still had a homogeneously Christian population.  This level of local state autonomy doesn’t go far enough for the most federalizing Religious rightists, and it goes too far for the most atomistic libertarians today. And surprise, only one GOP candidate defended this traditional view recently-RP.

McBrown, I’d rather not re-hash the drug debate, other than to say I did not admit what you say I did, and I do not admit it now.  In fact, I stated at that time and still believe that on balance the drug war was good, in spite of its shaky constitutional foundations on the federal level, because it provides an easy mean to identify and incarcerate violent individuals for a long time, and it’s succeeding in lowering violent crime. I also mocked these individuals as a bunch of worthless hoodlums obsessed with 26” rims and “corn rows” (or meth mouth in the case of trailer trash), as you may recall.

I also want to say that you really gave me a lot to think about when you said, “Hey, Rip Van Winkle, we’re in the 21st century now!  The entire nation isn’t white or Christian!” And, I also found your point compelling that the “United States of America has a Bill of Rights.  You want to throw that out the window.” Very interesting stuff.

@ Roach, My theory is that you posted this aritcle just to get some reaction, since your others don’t appear to be well read.  I guess I’m good at getting you readers.  You should thank me.

I’m sorry to be pointing out the obvious.  You consistently seem miss it.

I’ll try and be more obtuse, if and when I read another of your posts.

Free (or at least freer) societies may indeed by the way to go *under today’s circumstances”, which are characterized by a great moral dissensus in America and the West today, M. Nucci. 

But I’m Catholic too, and things were not always like this. There once was Christendom, and in many important ways it seems superior to today’s self-destructive, liberal order. 

What if we had a Catholic nation with a Catholic monarch?  Was the Church wrong when it said things, like it did in the Syllabus of Errors, that “error had no rights?” I don’t think so, because the Church, unlike the State of NY, happened to be right in its various pronouncements.  Politics is tricky of course; the right law or action often depends on the circumstances, and we must often make do with “second best” solutions.  I don’t think the Church contradicts itself today when it recognizes that legal interference with conscience is wrong, because today and in the 20th Century the great spiritual and mortal threat is the atheist state, even though in the past it was the heretical anarchist and liberal trouble-maker.

As Jonathan Swift put it, “He knew no reason why those who entertained opinions prejudicial to the public should be obliged to change, and should not be obliged to conceal them. And as it was tyranny in any government to require the first, so it was weakness not to enforce the second; for a man may be allowed to keep poisons in his closet, but not to send them about for cordials.”

@ Roach, YOU posted on 4/30 that the drug laws were “unconstituional” and that you’d “undo” it.

Specifically, YOU wrote, “I concede much federal legislation, including drug legislation, is probably unconstitutional and this concerns me greatly.  I’d undo the whole package.”

I’m sorry if I misconstrued your statement that “undoing” something and something being unconstituional meant it wasn’t “good”.

If constituitonality isn’t important in your lexicon of “good” and “bad”, I guess we don’t have a basis for discussion.

Singapore--I can hear it calling you.

@ Roach, Last post, I promise.

Please answer the question(s):  Would you outlaw cigarettes?  Booze?  If not, why not?  If you want to be “morally” consistent.

If you can’t, or don’t, I have no choice but to conclude that you recongnise that your position is untenable.

No, I’d not outlaw them.  I might even legalize or decriminalize marijuana, though I’m inclined not to only because it seems to incense the kind of people whom I feel quite good about annoying.  But I’d certainly keep heroin, cocaine, etc. highly illegal. Why?  Because the latter drugs are worse in their individual and social effects, often makin gmen lose their minds, are more highly addictive, and the people who deal them seem more violent and useless on average.  In other words, I’d not settle this question on the basis of some abstract rule.

Alcohol and tobacco, incidentally, are *good for you.* So I think your major premise is flawed.  I’m not primarily talking about physical health in my discussion of the “human good,” of course.  My heroes include St. Sebastian and St. Maximilian Kolbe, and, needless to say, their ends weren’t all that physically healthy. 

Since I’m not a materialist, and think the real goods in life are spiritual--friendship, conviviality, conversation, piety, etc.--it should be obvious why wine and cigarettes are good for you. 

If you don’t see why, may I suggest Hillaire Belloc’s heroic poem in praise of wine.

Miss Cognate,

Since when is the word ‘Liberal’ an appellation of which one can be proud ?
[...]

Posted by Charles on May 06, 2008.

Originally it implied deep admiration and respect for liberty, Miss Charles.

‘Originally it implied deep admiration and respect for liberty, Miss Charles.’

Only according to the framework of a particular ideological narrative, as well as a particular ideological definition of the word liberty.  Only within the bounds of the rebel movements of Whiggery, encyclopaedism, and philosophisme is one endowed with deep admiration and respect for liberty called a Liberal.  Outside of these narrow sophistic constraints, Liberals were greeted with the hostility and impatience suitable for criminals.  They have never been much more than, like I said, the negation of order, the solvent of the establishment, all traditions, habits, morals, and customs.

By the way, sorry for supposing you were a woman.  My first thought was that cognate meant the counterpart to agnate.

“Is polygamy wrong?”

Yes. No. It depends. This is a real answer for a real world in which morality does not, cannot, inform us of the righteousness or wickedness of absolutely everything in black and white terms. This should not be confused with “moral relativism”, and certainly not in comparison to one who thinks he can pre-choose ethical goods for others based on self-admittedly subjective criteria.

I think homosexuality is wrong, even repugnant. I think indulging in drugs, even the ones you find acceptable like alcohol and tobacco, is a mistake and leads one to diminish himself. However, these wrongs pale before the evil of dispatching armed thugs to crack the skulls of sodomites or locking away drug users for decades. Mr. Roach says that those vices are “destructive”, and so that justifies their prohibition. I think it very strange that he does not see how plundering people of their property, isolating them from the rest of society to be turned into wards of the state, and, if they resist, killing them, are more destructive.

There is an argument behind the libertarianism I espouse. It is not Mr. Roach’s laughably arbitrary pronouncement on which chemicals are evil and which are not, in and of themselves and absent of all context. It is not the foolishness of the socialist or utilitarian who believes he can determine what is in the best interests of another person better than that person can himself. Rather, it is the polar opposite - respect for the autonomy of each individual. Every man owns himself and the fruits of his labors, and every man is responsible for his own actions. Certainly no one else can have a better claim on these things, for if man does not even own himself than how can he possibly think to dictate what others can and cannot do? If man does not know what is good for himself, how can he be trusted to determine what is good for others? Tied up in that is the acknowledgment that the state is bound by the same moral laws as everyone else, and that an act that would be immoral or criminal if committed by anyone else remains just as immoral and criminal if executed by a government official. 

Mr. Roach may call this atomistic or pretend that it negates any interest in community, family, or an ethical sense beyond abstaining from the initiation of force. He may nourish whatever delusion makes him happy. That argument will, however, continue to be made of straw.

My final note will be to challenge Mr. Roach to look deeper into his view of modern localities being akin to the voluntary associations or covenant communities of market anarchists. He is missing something crucial: consent. Or, in other words, the whole voluntary part. Political decentralism is important - probably necessary - to libertarianism, but it is hardly sufficient on its own.

Mike, two points. 

First, you ask that if it’s wrong for someone to do something, why is not also wrong when the state does so?  Because the state works through laws.  The laws represent the considered judgment of the community’s elected officials.  I can’t kidnap and lock you away when you steal, but the state can when you do.  Likewise if you batter me, try to kill me, trespass, etc.  In other words, your argument proves too much, because we all agree (or should) that the state needs some kind of justice system for traditional crimes and has some authority in this area, even if individuals themselves can’t punish you for these same things when they’re victims.  Self-defense is a special case, an immediate need based on the equities of a special situation. As the old common law adage goes:  no one can be a judge in his own case.

Second, your point on consent elides over something important.  Our most fundamental relationships--to God, to our parents, to our family, to our nation--are not chosen.  We are born into webs of authority and obligation, with unchosen rules and debts.  You might say, this is OK, because we’re children in our youth and adults now.  but why is 18 a magic number?  Why not 14 or 25?  We must adopt some convention, and it will always be somewhat arbitrary.  In other words, we must make various conventions--drive on the right side of the road, 18 is the age of majority, etc.--and our elected government and its officials must use force to make these conventions stick, or we’ll have chaos.  Even voluntary communities must have some enforcement mechanism, and that must be applied against the dull, the young, visitors who stumble on one’s territory, the insane.  There must also be some mechanism for addressing unchosen obligations, such as what hte common law calls torts--unchosen, accidental harms to others, i.e., beyond the realm of contract and consent.  The consent formula simply papers over too much of what is necessary in life, including dealing with disorder of different kinds, anti-social elements and rules dealing with the immature and the young.  (And in the case of the young, also the nearly universal imposition of rules and institutions for protecting them from extremely bad parents, where once again we must make choices against people’s consent and wishes to benefit third parties.)

I think your point about the relative evils of some “moral crimes” and how they’re punished is well taken.  I agree that we should punish with an eye to the good not only of the society but of the criminal too, even if his most realistic good is permanent institutionalization. But the state must somehow someway punish people without their consent, including both criminals and foreign invaders, or that state won’t be around very long, and no such community can attract any real support. 

In other words, we’re back in the real world where imperfect judgments must be made using our reason, the accumulated judgment of our ancestors in the form of tradition, and our best judgment under conditions of uncertainty. Incidentally, I’m just as unkeen on making new laws as I am on undoing old ones; in other words, I don’t presume to have all the answers either, whether on the basis of some slide rule formula on force and liberty or any other principle that presumes to rearrange society according to some plan.

Pardon my historical ignorance but I can’t think of many communities, save for those
created by religious sectarians and whimsical intellectuals, that have been based on
“voluntary associations.” Libertarians, who are useful strategically but deluded by
their individualist epistemology anthropology, typically assume a past that was
full of self-determining individuals actualizing the Lockean social contract, according
to the preferred plan of some presentday libertarian institute. Almost all communities
I can think of were authoritarian, sexist, homophobic and status-based. This is not an
argument against them. I’m all for such social arrangements, and particularly if they
act as what Bertrand de Jouvenel called a “makeweight” to modern public administration.
Although a Ron Paul supporter and someone who out of desperation has voted for the LP
I sit listening in disbelief whenever libertarians talk about the libertarian societies
in the past. Such societies were probably as numerous as the number of gay marriages
contracted in the Third World.

in the past, I find myself listening in disbelief whenever libertarians discuss
history. Certainly they cannot believe that all of the blue-collar types who are
rallying to Hillary have an innate desire for freedom. They are voting for an
all-powerful managerial state to redistribute income to their class.

There can be, and has been, law and courts of law without a monopoly of violence,
indeed without a state. Such laws should protect (and historically mainly has protected)
a person and his property. Period.

Then of course owner(s) of real property can set up stricter rules (beyond that of
the sactity of persons and their property), indeed they can elect whatever rules
they may chose. If a visitor then does not comply accordingly to these stricter rules,
he can be evicted from said property.

Then Mr Roach can live in his chosen community so as he please. But as I understand it,
Mr Roach’s main problem with this is that it would not enable him to (through the
state) exercise violence against people leading different lives from his own.

I pity him.

I know I said my previous post would be my last, but I saw a couple of points that I think bear addressing.

To Dr. Gottfried: There may or may not have been fully libertarian anarchist societies in the past, but there certainly were societies that were far closer to that model than to the statist regimes we live under today. In any case, I did not make any appeal to the halcyon, golden days of yore when everyone was a libertarian in the state of nature. I do not believe that such a time ever existed, nor is precedent important to me in this regard. I do not claim the past or tradition as any sort of justification of what is right.

To Mr. Roach: I do not agree that it is legitimate for the state to punish an aggressor, but not for the victim. Even if I did, it would be up to me to prove whence this special privilege arose, and how it was justified. Note that I do not find broad agreement by some men to use force against some others very persuasive. The state, after all, is simply a collection of men. If the power was derived through consent, well, that’s one thing, but that is explicitly not the case we’re dealing with. I do not see how saying that there is one morality for normal men, and another morality for the men of the state, is not highly relativistic.

I also do not agree that delineating children from adults can be achieved satisfactorily through arbitrary, one-size-fits-all conventions, nor do I think that they are necessary. There are real reasons beyond convention that children, or the extremely mentally retarded, are treated differently than adults. Because these reasons exist, we can look to the correction of their handicapped conditions as better ground for determining their adulthood than any age limit.

Finally, Mr. Roach says that we are born into certain obligations, to family, to God, etc, and yet we are certainly not compelled to submit to the theft of our property by family members, nor may they enslave us to fight for their benefit, nor use force to compel us to buy, eat, drink, and medicate what they demand. So why, then, does the state get to do this? I would have thought that even conservatives would see the family as an institution with far more importance and moral authority than the state!

Mr. Roach

I happen to be an ex-libertarian (of sorts) and I whole-heartedly agree with you here. I’ll just give a simple anecdotal example to illustrate their underlying epistemological inconsistency.

I’ve read—in one discussion—this example of why “majoritarian” values are bad (typically riddled with the Randian type epistemic confusion): if the majority of the customers in a store suddenly decided that because they’re more crowded, heck, they’re not paying the store owner for the things they’ve bought, how can we justify this?

Just take a look at how contorted the scenario itself is. As if in a society where any “mob” could suddenly decide not to pay shop owners, stores of any type could possibly emerge. This is like the nonsensical “libertarian quasi-utopian past” delusion that Prof. Gottfried mentions. It is an absolute travesty of sociology and anthropology.

The simple fact of the matter is, if we “all” (or at least the “majority” of us) agree that the above scenario is unacceptable, that itself demonstrates that the vast majority of us are inherently morally-guided beings. The destiny of a value that mocks majority hinging on the very acceptance of a majority of this assessment as morally right. Talk about a crushing inconsistency.

“Liberty,” for anyone who has a modicum of insight about living beings—as opposed to dead matter—is the first condition of SURVIVAL. We hate being caged because at the bottom of all existence, all animals know that slavery is either death (due to losing one’s ability to fight for survival—by seeking food, reproducing, etc.) or it simply means, well, we’ve become food for a predator.

Anything that fundamentally challenges our survival is itself a threat to liberty, because liberty is the LICENSE to fight for your survival. It is because of this fundamental SHARED human nature that we—as a MAJORITY of normal, healthy beings who are not suffering from an inherent psychological ailment of death-wish—also have a right to limit the behavior of all those who directly or indirectly, immediately or latently, threaten our survival.

If the precondition of “gay” marriage is to create a society that is so absorbed in sexual hedonism that the primary function of sexuality—procreation—and the social norms and regulations that supervise the performance of that function—marriage norms and laws—are relegated to relic status, that in the long is itself the most fundamental threat to society’s survival. Liberty in this context, understood as the “freedom” of say to men to engage in amorous relations, can only be a “privilege” in that in the state of nature, no society where such bonding is recognized as a norm exists, nor can that acceptance create a stable society capable of providing the highly CIVILIZED and SAFE ENVIRONMENT (isolated from most of the hazards of nature) that such men can then indulge themselves in in a said type of relation.

It is amazing that people who never shut up about liberty cannot see this fundamental precondition on which their beloved Western luxuries (yes, luxuries, not “rights") depend on.

Mr. Roach, I appreciate your thoughtfull and intelligent response to my last post.  I am in total agreement that the Catholic Monarchies have been much slandered by our present day court historians who change history as the state sees fit for their ongoing atheistic mythology.  Such are the times we live in.

Dr Gottfried hits the nail on the head again.  I have wondered how man, who must reproduce to perpetuate his existence, can have his nature considered as an individual when he is dependent on the family bonds, father and mother, husband and wife, to even be.  Natural law condemns Locke.  Every man is born with dependencies, talents, weaknesses, and into an unchosen state of life. As such, one cannot believe in both Divine Providence and libertarianism unless he is a Deist.  But a Christian—which is to say a Catholic, Orthodox, or Copt—who does not merely invoke Divine Providence when something agreeable happens to him, cannot but reject the ridiculous fantasies of Locke and Rousseau.  I think those two men have done incomprehensible damage to civilisation.  Their spurious claims and the ideological fabrications that buttress them are exactly parallel to the atheists and rationalists today who condemn the Catholic Monarchies as inherently bad or representative of corruption.

They are like men who tell a lie and then find themselves making even more extravagant ones to protect the initial falsehood.  They must demonise their betters of the former, superiour age, or else they cannot justify their existence.  Born a rebel, progression towards being nothing more than a negation of principle and of all order is the natural state of the liberal and the variant of Liberalism called libertarianism.  They pose a bigger threat to civilisation than the Moslems ever could.

Mike, you ask, “we are certainly not compelled to submit to the theft of our property by family members, nor may they enslave us to fight for their benefit, nor use force to compel us to buy, eat, drink, and medicate what they demand.” Really?  Parents can’t take the wages of their children, make them work on a farm, demand they adhere to curfews, beat them when they’re misbehaving, force them to go to a particular church, and the like?  Sure they can.  They always have, and they are right to do so, because the good of the child depends upon the economic unity of the family, and the family in almost all cases has a natural community of interest and benovelence towards their children.

I always find it funny and a bit disingenuous how libertarians mock everything but the individual as a reality.  If a corporation has an identifiable collective good, and officers and board members must account to shareholders for it (as in the case of a “breach of fiduciary duty” lawsuit, then why can’t a society?  Both are collections of individuals that sometimes disagree, but the disagreements can be resolved by reference to certain natural purposes:  economic and total welfare respectively.

We have a nature.  That nature points the way to the good.  Things human beings use and create--states, armies, art, tools, language--have intrinsic purposes too. Contra Miss Shvarts at Yale, ovaries and vaginas really do exist not for self-induldgent and murderous art projects but to create children, that normal people love and care for. Those purposes define the excellence of human endowments and creations, as well as their misuse and decadence, and movement one way or the other defines all the states in between. 

The state can punish because, unlike individuals, it is a neutral party in a dispute between two of society’s members, or at least strives to be.  Hence the imagery of “blind justice.” Plus it has force at its disposal.  Finally, it has the collective welfare of that grouping as its purpose and aspiration.  These three conditions--disinterestedness, force, and common welfare--are what make states different than individuals. 

We expect from and grant to the state, figuratively and literally, the right and power to deal with disputes, expel invaders, etc.  It must have POWER.  It must have power over children, renegades, frauds, traitors, and invaders. Its collective power is why it matters; lone wolves can’t stand up to it, and ideally neither can malevolent invaders.  If it doesn’t have power, it disappears. This is a fact, because (a) we need it to survive from other groupings of hostile people, (b) we’re social and have the friction of social life, and (c) experience gives us some sense of its purposes, limitations, and conditions of flourishing.  It BALANCES various social goods, and liberty is only one of them.

The fundamental political problem that liberals of all stripes, including libertarians, often make light of is that politics consists of balancing and restraining the individual for the benefit of the collection of individuals knows as society.  Just as corporations must restrain, police, and sometimes cashier officers for the benefit of shareholders, societies must do so both with governors and the governed.  LAW and republican institutions are important tools and discoveries because they constrain both according to a relatively objective rule known to all. But other modes of statecraft more attuned to people less capable of self-government have no less authority.  Necessity gives everyone everywhere certain rights.  This is why it’s an affirmative defense to all crimes (but murder), and this is why states, even illiberal ones, have authority.  Chaos and anarchy are always worse; just look at Iraq, by way of example. 

Incidentally, it’s hardly relativist to argue that states are not the same as individuals and acquire certain powers and authority over the governed simply by virtue of their necessity and nature--their telos--as states.  Man is not woman.  Corporation is not a vilalge.  And a mob is not a state.  The misuse of words and strained analogies--taxation is theft, the state is a mob--is hardly persuasive rhetoric in the libertarian clause.

I find the analysis on point but silly.  It is a bit like reading any random description of the neo-cons (from either side) and calling them “conservatives”.

I don’t imagine Lord Acton or Thomas Jefferson would fall into the category.

What I find bothersome but common between many “liberals” and “conservatives” is that when they find something bad or something good, the first thing they want to do is put a gun to your head to prevent or force you.

Before the “Drug War”, we had Skid Row.  And many people were helped.  We didn’t try to determine the moral/medical line, but recognized the negative externalities of having addicts.  Now we throw them in jail where they are left untreated (as well as a large number of mentally ill - shame on us!).

Natural law not only says what is right and wrong, but also will say what the proper agency to deal with a particular right or wrong.

Only in the rarest circumstances ought it be the state.  Or do you go to court every time you are annoyed at someone?  Isn’t that a problem?

Why is it “conservative” to sic Leviathan on anyone you disapprove of?

Balancing the state, church, culture, society, community, and the individual is NOT easy or simple. 

Hurling insults at or caricaturing those who might balance things differently should be beneath you.

The only vice I see common amongst the Taki Conservatives here and many Libertarians - and indeed the neo-cons is a luciferic level of Hubris.  “I know how to run things and they don’t”.  That is one Ron Paul difference and I think I would agree - I don’t know how to run things, especially at a national level.

Some wish to treat addicts as terrorists even if the addiction doesn’t interfere with their life.
Some with to treat addicts as if there is nothing wrong although in some cases it is slow-motion suicide.
Some wish to just treat addicts, but know they cannot be treated effectively against their will, so would seek to limit the damage they can do to themselves or others until that point.

Which is the most charitable path?

And what of those who crave or are addicted to power?

Theoretically, the volunteer state of the libertarian’s world is at peace with the philosophical parameters Mr.Roach has set-up.

Of course, there are many libertarians who are statists and whom Mr.Roach is apparently arguing with for the umpteenth time based on someone he might have met a conference or read on some web site posting board before, but of what interest is a statist libertarian to a healthy right?

A volunteer state would likely use the cheapest and most humane forms of internal discipline (the shun) and employs forms of censorship--all by volunteer citizenship.  Most importantly, excommunication and banishment would be critical.

Mr. Roach, clever enough, attempts to defend the modern Enlightenment Era state, as much a heresy as defending the Enlightenment Era’s rights.

Libertarianism is inherently an apolitical philosophy, but if it going to engage in social democratic politics, then anti-war, anti-drug war, pro-liberty, appeals to justice slogans and arguments are bound to be produced and the tools and dupes of the status quo, rather than doing something interesting like the chaps at Chronicles who will attempt to get to the Right of “libertarians”, Mr.Roach drags us back towards the non-radical center.

So then my question is regarding the necessary powers that the state has do you feel it is in line with conservative values that the state unilateraly in response to a perceived terrorist threat revoke rights that protecetd the citizens from the state.  I am referring to habeus corpus, right to face one’s accuser, rights to representation and a trial,?

A second problem also shows itself.  Consider the 55mph speed limit.  It does add a marginal increase in energy efficiency and safety.  But no one obeyed it.

Many of the “laws” on morality were not strictly enforced even back then.  At least not on skid row or in a red-light district.  But the social disapproval (and freedom from association) substituted.

If you pass too many petty laws, at some point it will cross a line - and when laws are generally disobeyed the law itself becomes a laughingstock.

And unenforced laws are a form of corruption - that is the only thing they tend to demonstrate, that some laws are real, and some are illusory, but both are printed in the same ink on the same paper.

Why should I respect or honor “the law” when it is not respectable or honorable?

At best, it is a Jeffersonian “It is his decision, let him enforcement” of the other branch.  Power not applied is power not corrupted.  Power applied may be, but it should be a scalpel and not an axe.

And yet this is the distinction which is also lost.  Yes, there were laws against things, but things rarely rose to the point where the state was involved.  It was small because it was often literally remote.  People would live with their vice remotely, or would live with restrictions in a larger community.

Enforcement was a last resort, not preemptive.

Some libertarians might bother about rarely enforced laws (i.e. only enforced when the activity becomes a nuisance), but they ought not.  I’d prefer to live in a de-jure tyranny with de-facto liberty than in de-jure liberty with de-facto tyranny.

Quote from Roach: “So it’s empirical, but show me when and where the US ever banned cigarettes?

Sure thing...right here:
http://www.fha.state.md.us/ohpetup/tobacco/selling.cfm (seriously dude, learn to google).

The sell of cigarettes containing cloves is banned in Maryland and we all know about local efforts to limit smoking around children and even break up families where one of the parents smoke but I suppose that is all about “creating communities with laws that aimed to make men more virtuous.”

Next Roach will be telling us that “If the driving force of popular government in peacetime is virtue, that of popular government during a revolution is both virtue and terror: virtue, without terror is destructive; terror without which virtue is impotent” is conservative.

Quote from Roach: “As demonstrated in the earlier thread on the drug war, many libertarians view conservative concerns for order and virtue as unprincipled enchroachments on the absolute primacy of liberty.”

But that wasn’t demonstrated on the thread at all because many of folks who disagreed with you weren’t libertarians at all but argue against the drug war as a prudential matter and the proper authority of the family.

Quote from Roach: “But I don’t believe subjects of traditional morals legislation (and laws against hard drugs) for a fairly simple reason:  those behaviors are wrong, self-destructive, denying of human reason and serve no function beyond mere hedonism.”

Hahaha… “human reason” standing against the hedonism of the monarchy,church, corrupting the virtue of the virtue of the people usual Jacobin BS.

Hard Drug bans are about traditional as the Federal Reserve and about as good of an idea and the 1914 Harrison Narcotics Tax Act passed only after the The New York Times published an article entitled “Negro Cocaine ‘Fiends’ Are New Southern Menace:Murder and Insanity Increasing Among Lower-Class Blacks” which was just more “racial hygiene” and social engineering BS by the AMA. 

The Drug laws in the country aren’t traditional in any sense but flow from the eugenics movement’s concept of the “perfect human nature” which is to be created by as Frederick Taylor Gates put it in Occasional Letter No. 1 (a publication of the General Education Board)”....we will organize our children and teach them to do in a perfect way the things their fathers and mothers are doing in an imperfect way, in the homes, in the shops on the farm.” So accordingly we have sex education, drug war education, snitch on your parents education etc.. in the schools because of the Roach’s Jacobin notion of morals legislation and government education programs to support public morals. 

But according to the Jaocbin Roach racialist eugenic social engineering is “conservative.”

I prefer the liberty to maintain the virtue of my own family as its head and take the advice of statist nannies like Roach.

@ All, This quote of C. Roach’s says it all:

“I’m for government restraining liberty for its own preservation and the broader preservation of the society, as well as to make it easier for people to lead virtuous lives.”

Personally, I like a government that perserves its citizens’ liberty (Remember, “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness”?)--not its own.

Or maybe, “A Government Of the People, By the People and For the People”?

Mr. Roach beleives that “virtue” consists of whatever the ruling elite of the day decides.

There are more than a few precedents for this attiutde in history.  If I enunciate them he’ll say I’m calling him a Nazi, so I won’t.

He can mask it in whatever guise he wants.

@ Mike DiBaggio,

“I do not claim the past or tradition as any sort of justification of what is right.”

Nor do you obviously claim it for evidence of what is possible. Libertarian notions of the good society are hopelessly blinded by ideology Utopian daydreams. They are not consistent with the Christian understanding of fallen man, nor is there any hint in the entirety of all of recorded human history that such a society is possible. Libertarians can no more wish away man’s fallen state and need for restraint than Marx could wish away self-interest.

Libertarians are the perfect illustration of that thing they say about a foolish consistency. In the name of consistency you actually have libertarians debating the wisdom and justice of laws against child porn. I kid you not.  If you are not aware of this ongoing debate, go check out Third Party Watch.

That is the trouble with ideologies. They make smart people foolish and good people evil. The idea that all of human morality and existence can be boiled down to one principle (their precious non-aggression principle) hardly merits anything more than a scoff and an eye roll. I used to kid with friends about the “abolish the stop sign” wing of libertarianism. Now I have a more absurd illustration, the “abolish laws against child porn” libertarians.

@ Red, Reductio Ad Adsurdum. 

The issue is where do you draw the line.

Roach wants it drawn in Washington DC

Great idea Red Phillips, let’s just abandon limited government and freedom and enact a tyranny and an iron fist government, just because of child porn!

jerry, you just illustrated another problem with many libertarians. They are all or nothing dichotomous thinkers who seem incapable of nuance. Being in favor of laws against child porn does not mean you want to “abandon limited government and freedom and enact a tyranny and an iron fist government.” Good grief.

Septeus - how do you know there wasn’t a cocaine-fueled increase in “murder and insanity” among lower class Blacks in the South in the early 1900’s?  Have you spent some time researching the records of Southern jails and asylums and found evidence to refute the claim? 

Ironically enough, the article you cited made a libertarian argument.  The author argued that the cocaine addiction problem was directly created through government interference, specifically through local prohibition laws which pushed blacks into drug use.  He also noted that the drug trade, once introduced, “can’t be stopped”.

Sounds like he was one of your libertarian forbears.

Quote: “Septeus - how do you know there wasn’t a cocaine-fueled increase in “murder and insanity” among lower class Blacks in the South in the early 1900’s?”

Because cocaine doesn’t cause murder and insanity to my medical knowledge and you have to prove that a commonly used substance was in fact doing this because it is your claim.

Nice try to shift the burden of evidence though…

Quote: “Being in favor of laws against child porn does not mean you want to “abandon limited government and freedom and enact a tyranny and an iron fist government.”

Yes is does. I don’t want the government limited in its power to arrest distribution of child porn in this society. I want an iron fist against child porn (actual child porn, not 17 year olds posting pictures of themselves on the net) but since the CPS is the #1 place predators are likely to hangout because it gives them access to children so I doubt any “War on Child Porn” would have a good result.

Local Enforcement where there is a local trust and investment in children would be more likely to work because protecting your neighbors children has the effect of protecting your own whereas a centralized command and control setup in Washington is divested of direct interest.

Government is never limited meaning there is no such thing as a Big Government that imposes limits on itself. Either there is small/little government or there is big government. The task of the conservative is to have moral government where it is needed and none at all where it is not thus we have little government because there is not much government needed insure social order in a conservative moral society and where citizens understand their roles.

So my disagreement with Roach is as mcbrown said it: “The issue is where do you draw the line.

Roach wants it drawn in Washington DC.”

I draw it with the local Sheriff or Mayor listening to the locals. 

Ask yourself what kind of laws a local Sheriff who lives in the community would want to enforce and the locals would want him to enforce and I don’t think they would want midnight no knock raids and gun fights with 80 year old women over a few pots of MJ.

And if locals weren’t the tolerant type I would like the “liberty” to find another community more suited to my family’s values. I don’t think a one law fits all communities from the “Saintly Enforcers for Virtue” in Washington D.C. is conservative but apparently Roach disagrees.

Roach is right that you don’t have a right to put anything you want into your body but he wrong when he says the government should be the ultimate authority or is even a good authority on the question of what individuals should ingest.

I don’t know where I disavowed federalism. This is simply a misstatement of my views. I believe in federalism.  I don’t believe all but very few issues should be decided at the federal level.  I believe in states’ rights, including the right of republican self government.

Much of the drug war complained of here and on Reason.com is on the local and state level, though, and I don’t see why a hardcore libertarian necessarily cares which level of government it is at.  I do believe, though, that if federalism is going to be destroyed and states are going to be told who they care hire, how much to pay them, what to teach their children, to celebrate MLK day, and the like, I’d just as soon (as a “second best solution") have it lock up dangerous people for a long time through the drug laws or some other relatively easy-to-prosecute offense.

Ideally we’d have very limited federal government and widely varied levels of social control at the state level based on local circumstances and preferences, but, if we’re to have uniformity and massive federal wealth transfers, I at least want them to clean up the mess they’ve created with, for example, subsidization of fatherless low IQ children by locking them up down the road before they rape or murder someone I love. 

I thought the infamous article on cocaine fiends squares with much contemporary experience:  coke heads are often irrational, aggressive, highly resourceful in getting high, and useless while addicted. It’s simply naive to think blacks were all behaving like angels until the seventies, when they decided to have a 10X crime rate compared to whites.

Septeus - who’s shifting the burden of evidence?  You make an assertion, and then your only piece of evidence is a 94-year old article that contradicts your claim. 

I would say the burden of evidence still rests with you, especially since your challenging the widely held belief that cocaine addiction leads to criminality and irrational behavior.

In any case, do you think that maybe, just maybe, I could Google up some evidence to link cocaine use with criminality?  And then do you think that maybe, just maybe, you could Google up some contrary evidence?  And then we could argue about who’s article was more recent or who’s article has a more credentialed author, blah, blah, blah.

As much fun as it would be to waste away a few hours doing this, at the end of the day we’d be left with our same positions, my common sense and widely-held view that criminality and cocaine use go hand and hand, and your ideologically blinkered view that they can’t possibly be linked.

Septeus7,

The issue is not what level ought to prosecute the heinous crime of child porn. The Ruwart spat has caused many libertarians to come out and say they don’t think there should be any laws against child porn. Just laws against the act being depicted if it constituted rape. No crime for possession. No crime for distribution. This is moral insanity, and it is the result of ideology run wild.

@ David Manley, Not to speak for Septeus, but you’re missing his point.

His point is not that cocaine may not be bad for you.  He never said that someone who committs a criminal act, linking with drug use, or not, shoutldn’t be punished.

The point is that Roach favors drug laws becasue they result in people WHO HAVEN’T DONE ANYTHIGN TO ANYONE ELSE

@ Manley, Sorry, the post cut off.

Roach believes in punishieg people for what they MIGHT do.  He likes the drug laws because they are a Trojan Horse for locking poeple up who he doesn’t feel are virtuous and, because they’re not “virtuous” may be more liklely to commit a crime.

That just doesn’t wash.  Alcohol makes it more liely people will commit crimes.  Should it be outlawed?  So does money?  Should we do away with it so that people won’t commit crimes to get it?  What other non-viruous behaviour should people be locked up for?  Pre-marital sex?  Masturbation?  Where do you draw the line?

Red’s child porn example is downright silly.  Of course purveyors of child porn should be arrested.  Chilren are harmed by its creation.  THERE IS A VICTIM.

But where there’s no victim other than the user, to have laws which exsit to ensure that everyone is “virutous” as defined by the majority, is Fascsim.

Personally, in situations where there is a real crime, and drugs are involved, I would favor enhancement of the penalty.

Positive law is generally not a big thing with the Right, conservative or libertarian, though, as Red notes, libertarian’s tend to lack the reasoning capacity to create compelling arguments.

Conservatives tend to be better (more compelling) at arguing against positive law, and Mr.Roach is not out of bounds to defend the status quo as a conservative, but his rational would hardly qualify him as a judicial conservative.

The question is if a town decided to ban porn (child porn--is more an agitprop example from the school of Ron Paul wants to legalize prostitution and drugs fed to ‘Christians’), is their a right as a consumer to it to be defended by a supra-state (see Larry Flynt)?

Is the state the guaranteer of rights?  Libertarians have been prone to be dupes on the question and fallen for the Trickster’s tactics...but conservatives have not exactly held strong on sound ‘federalism’ with their Right to Life Amendment rationale.

I was reminded of this column today when I found this delightful story:
http://reason.com/blog/show/126284.html

Another triumph of the disinterested, justice-seeking state, eh?

I don’t favor stopping drogs solely because it’s a proxy.  I was speaking in hyperbole when I earlier suggested mere bad style--large rims, corn rows--should be the basis for punishment.  Drugs should be illegal because they’re bad for you, and the community has the right to set rules for paternalistic reasons based on likely results, the need to preserve internal order, the law of averages, and that sort of thing. There’s no need to rehash the merits of these laws. I think they’re good.

The degree of punishment, however, is always a separate issue from whether conduct is illegal, and punishment (even for offenses that are dubious or that one would undo in a perfect world) should consider the liklihood of future crime. Drug dealers, drug users, and drug offenders of all kinds commit a lot more “real” crime, as in violent crime, theft, and things of that nature.  This is an important factor in justifying long sentences for certain drug users and dealers, even if you’d defederalize drug crimes and decriminalize marijuana.  In other words, we must consider the costs and benefits of any change in policy.

Consider this report on recidivism: 

http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/pdf/rpr94.pdf

Look at Table 9.  49% of drug offenders were back in jail within three years of release.  Needless to say, this far exceeds the percentage of normal, random adults convicted of a crime over a three year period.  This is not what we’d expect from people who are basically law abiding and are merely caught up in hysteria by the authorities.

Look at Table 10.  Fully 58.8% of rearrests (about 2/3 of which resulted in imprisonment) were for crimes other than drug crimes, i.e,. theft, robbery, etc. 

Judges look to liklihood of reoffending in sentencing individual offenders, as they should.  Ideally, small time crooks, unlikely to reoffend, would be released more quickly and punished more leniently than incorrible recidivists.  But nothing’s perfect.  Judges must use proxies of behavior to look at the extent of harm and liklihood of social harm in individual cases. In making big picture decisions about what to punish, how much to punish it, and when to release people, we must use these same proxes too in crafting mandatory minimums, whether certain conduct is illegal, and the like.

We should aim ultimatley for as much precision in sentencing and punishment as possible, looking to every proxy available, including offense, age, gang affiliation, criminal record, etc.

This is not akin to that Tom Cruise movie where “pre cogs” arrested folks before any crime was committed.  These are real people, self-identified, who have broken the law, who often have records, about whom we can use all of the available individual and group information and statistics to classify.  We should aim to distinguish the dangerous, the habitually foolish, and those who made what is likely a single mistake of youth. Once you ensnare an anti-social trouble maker in the net, someone with no respect for the law, I don’t see why you’d want to release him too quickly on the basis of abstract concerns for what the law would be in an ideal world when 2/3ds will be rearrested within three years, and 59% of those rearrests will be for “real” crimes.  Consider it a blessing you found one of these guys, took him out of commission, and locked him away before he did more harm to the society and its citizens.

@ Roach, I agree. 

You wrote, “Consider it a blessing you found one of these guys, took him out of commission, and locked him away before he did MORE harm to the society and its citizens.” (Emphasis mine).

The key word is “more”.  That is, you posit that they were imprisoned for the harm they did to others, not themselves.

No one quarrels with that

McBrown, stick to your guns and at least defend a position.  Look at your penultimate comment and compare it to your latest:  you first say it’s wrong to punish people more, longer, or at all on the basis of what they might do.  I say it’s not. Then you highlight MORE suggesting it’s OK to do so, as long as there is some quantum of original harm.  This is a new position, distinct from your earlier one.  Avoiding consistency in your position is an annoying trick that shuts down conversation, just as demands for proof of things that are not that controversial, viz., prove the Iraq war began in 2003. 

Incedentally, it’s always a social harm to break the law, though it may be de minimis.  In other words, broken laws can presumptively be punished and it’s presumptively harmful to society to break the law, even if the law should be changed for any number of reasons.  It’s quite different to say:  this is a bad law that punishes people who are not that harmful, versus this is an UNJUST law that makes people do what is wrong against their will, i.e., Soviet boarding school practices, etc.

MY position is consistent.  Yours is all over the board.  At first you’re in favor of the War on Drugs (a Federal program).  Then you’re not, “I’d undo it.” “It’s unconstitutional”.

Then it’s, “ Well, it gets the guys with corn rows and rims off the street”.  Then it’s “I was be facetious”.

Then it’s Drugs aren’t “virtuous” and should be against the law because they’re bad for the government which has the right to protect itself.  (You never came up with anything rebutting my comments on other non-virtuous behavior--pre-marital sex, masturbation etc., so I figured you’d thrown in the towel)

Finally, you admit:  It’s AFTER a drug user harms someone else, we should imprison them.

MY POINT ALL ALONG.

Thanks, for finally agreeing with me.

I let the balance of your post go.  Quite frankly, I’m bored with it.  If I take “Red’s” arguments above (i.e Reductio Ad Absurdum), your position is Facist, plain and simple. 

Def:  A political philosophy, movement, or regime (as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual.

Anyway, it’s been real

g a prison sentecne because o a person’s memebership in a group is unconsitutional, i.e. Freedom of association.

@ CR, The last paragraph was a whole different thought, which I elected not to pursue.  I didn’t see it still on the screen.  My bad.

“Red’s child porn example is downright silly.  Of course purveyors of child porn should be arrested.  Chilren are harmed by its creation.  THERE IS A VICTIM.”

McBrown, it isn’t silly because there are 200 + long threads over at Third Party Watch arguing about it. And the Princess of Child Porn herself, Mary Ruwart, just posted a long article defending her position against laws against child porn. Yes it is a bit of agitprop, but it perfectly illustrates the moral blindness of certain libertarians.  Their ideology trumps all.

Red;

It illustrates the futility of working with libertarians detached from the concerns of their neighbors, though I would argue, as a Barr-man, someone thought of a neat tactic to help clear the field.

Let me spin this around, if Chuck Baldwin were asked, “Are Jews who refuse to accept Christ going to Hell?” or “Is it possible that the Pope is the Anti-Christ?” or “If a Christian marries a Muslim, are both going to hell?” and it generated “200 + long threads” on the subject as it relates to a political campaign, I’d be in the Rodney King Camp as well.

Thus, I don’t ‘get’ Mr.Roach’s angle save to go over for the umpteenth time that we here conservatives are not libertarians.

Conservatism is largely defined by its opposition to other philosophies.  I personally appreciate thoughtful posts on the differences between the different philosophies that supposedly co-exist on the Right.