One of the greatest delusions in the world is the hope that the evils in this world are to be cured by legislation. – Thomas B. Reed (1886)
The more corrupt the state, the more it legislates. – Tacitus
There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible to live without breaking laws. – Ayn Rand
I profess, at the outset, to being a card carrying member of the Libertarian party. I don't feel any strong affinity or loyalty to the party; just a kind of "common identification" with the basic philosophy. The delicious irony is it is an organization made up of confirmed individualists. In that context, there probably isn't even a party platform, because that would require consensus, and individualists are parsimonious with their saluting of anything.
If there were a party platform it would be pretty simple, like repealing 90% of all laws, eliminating 90% of all bureacracies, and installing (for a change) a constitutional form of government.
Politicos today don't talk much about that. No, they talk about higher or lower funding of this bunch or that group, without even stopping to consider the absolute need. It's useful to see how we got this way. The government was founded on Federalist principles. That is, an expressly limited government. It was confusing enough in the 1780's when the so-called Federalist Party wound up supporting big government, and it took the Democratic-Republicans to finally win that battle (see this historical treatment).
Unfortunately, the war has gone poorly since then. It does appear that the modern day version of big government, the Democrat party is getting hammered the way the Federalist party did in the 1810's; only for us to to find now that the Republican Party is embracing all the big brother-inspired evil that folks didn't like about the Dems.
Let's examine the term "conservative". If by conservative you mean resistant to change; that can be said about both major parties. If however it means what it meant when the term applied to Barry Goldwater, Bill Buckley, and Ronald Reagan, it means something completely different.
Anyway, adopting the idea that limited government is still the domain of the so-called conservatives, then they have a common objective with libertarians and Libertarians, at least on the economic and political sides.
There is a very sharp divide at the moment between conservatives and Republicans. The opportunity does not exist for the Democrats, however. That is, unless the Dems somehow start a total retool and become the party of smaller government. Then we'll see a Federalist Party-like meltdown of the Republicans. Now THAT would be fun to watch.
3 comments:
I always considered myself a pragmatic Libertarian. By that I mean I almost always voted Republican because it would move things closer to the Libertarian point than voting for someone who would get a 2 percent of the vote.
I've got a conservative friend who wants to see Hillary elected president so Republicans start acting like Republicans again. The logic goes like this: When Clinton was president, we got the Contract With America and other great conservative movements. If a Clinton proposed some of the current spending, the Republicans would band together to stop it. Because it's coming from the GOP, they approve it and there's no conservative voice.
I consider myself a conservative libertarian, and I find myself growing more and more disgruntled with the direction the Republican party is taking. They are too enamored of spending money and big government, to the point that in some very important ways they are indistinguishable from the Democrats. On the other hand, there are still significant differences between the Republicans and the moonbat Democrats in some very critical errors.
If this were a time like the boomtime of the 90's, I could see voting against the Republicans in order to give them a few years wandering in the wilderness to hopefully encourage them to return to their limited government roots. Unfortunately, this ain't the 90's (and in fact the liberal Democrats mishandling of the terrorist threat in the 90's is why we are in this mess today). With the current war going on between the West and radical Islam, a war that Democrats seem determined to undermine and lose, and that even some Republicans don't seem to recognize as the critical culture war it really is, there is no way I can rationalize voting for a Democrat, or doing ANYTHING to make it more likely that they return to power. The stakes are just too high, and the Democrats have shown repeatedly that they are completely inept and incapable of treating this war with the seriousness it demands.
So, therefore, it has to be the Republicans. The risk of returning the Democrats to power is just too high, even though the Republicans deseprately need to taught to return to their core values.
I can certainly follow the logic of Mr. Tanner. I would probably be willing to suffer through a Hillary presidency to achieve the greater good. The biggest tragedy there would be a further downgrade to the top office; but then there is the chance that some real foreign policy damage could be done--especially in Iraq.
It may be a few years before it can even come to this, but the fight may have to evolve to the more compelling two party choice: Libertarians vs. Republocrats.
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