Comments on: Why I am not a Libertarian

By: Lord Ben

Lord Ben — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

I think Libertarian is the perfect party for school board, villiage board, county, perhaps even for state officials. But not for Senators and Presidents. I believe the gov’t has a bigger role to play then they would have in their ideal world. They’re idea of America is a nice fantasy, but not based on realism.

I wish the gov’t would stay out of my life, until the neighbor kid has a party at 2 am.

PS, I’m glad your site is back up.

By: Robert

Robert — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Thanks Ben. BTW, I love your site but haven’t been able to visit it as much as I’d like this week (silly things like life keep getting in the way of important things like blogging!)

Whether or not libertarianism is a good political philosophy is a different question than the one I tried to answer here, namely “Is libertarianism a good personal philosophy?” For instance, I recently read someone had written “the only things that are “wrong” are things that hurt other people in some way…Sleeping with a person of the same sex is not wrong. It doesn’t hurt anybody…” The author of that sentence clearly uses (or at least claims to use) a libertarian ethic for personal decisions. In my opinion, such an ethic is insufficient for questions of personal morality.

But as one of my favorite talk show hosts frequently points out, there is a difference between “right and wrong” and “legal and illegal”. However, I think that libertarianism is sufficiently flawed that it is insufficient for a political philosophy, either (without even going into financial or foreign policy matters).

I think it’s better for the national government to have a more hands-off, libertarian philosophy and for the local governments to have a more involved role (the inverse of what you said). I believe that was the basic idea enshrined in the 9th and 10th amendments – the federal government would be very strictly limited in its powers, with the states and people retaining all other rights and powers.

By: Lord Ben

Lord Ben — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

I’ll disagree there, I think the national government would be better off taking an active role in making certain things standard in the nation, and the local goverments should try to make sure the airport lawn is mowed and the snow is plowed off the streets, but other then that stay out of the whole social engineering concept.

By: Chris

Chris — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

You seem to be stepping over yourself in an attempt to either reconcile your political beliefs and your faith, or to discredit your original political views. I don?t think Christianity as a personal belief and Libertarianism as a political belief are mutually exclusive, although neither can fulfill the role of the other. Throughout your blog, and especially towards the end, you seem to be mixing government and individuals. In your example of the Good Samaritan, you seem to be hinting that the Libertarian philosophy is not a compassionate one, but I would like to point out that compassion is not the use of public funds. As in the Bible, it starts and ends with the individual. Of course, all of this is my personal interpretation.
Earlier in the article, you mentioned correlation and causation in regards to sexual offenders and pornography. I could also prove to you that these criminals used sidewalks at some point before committing indecent acts, but it would not be of much use to you. Obviously, you already understand this, since you mentioned causation. This is not a society based on Pre-Crime (Tom Cruise ? Minority Report), but one based principals such as freedom and personal responsibility (Tell me what you think of Matt 15:11, ?Not that which goeth into the mouth defileth a man; but that which cometh out of the mouth, this defileth a man.?). We must have a firm foundation in reality. The problem with the Social Cost perspective is that the majority of people who engage in activities which we consider harmful to them or immoral do so in a peaceful manner that does not harm society. In other words, punish the criminal, but do not restrict the ideas freedom that made this nation great. In any case, my intension was not to make a big response to your blog (which happened), or to be offensive (which hopefully did not happen). :}