What It Feels Like To Be a Libertarian

[Skull Pilot]

Dude that wasnt for you it was for the guy saying gov is evil.

BTW the founders didnt expect us to not tailor the country to our needs, they wrote it in the system so we could evolve with the unforseen things to come.

You may not like everything that was done but you are wrong about Unfettered markets so what the hell.

i have said and am saying the fucking government is out of control.

and you believe those unforeseen things meant that the government would go so far as to tell you what you can and can't eat?

That the government would go so far as to make you work for 120 days a year only to give that money to the government?

That the federal government would coerce and extort state and local governments to follow policies that it has no power to make or enforce?

That's what you call "good" government?

 

[elvis]

I dont mind you critizing it at all, its what makes it healthy.

The founders would call you an asswink to your face for saying all government is evil.

They constructed a wonderful system that has managed to save the American people time and time again.

Government is not evil, an unwatched government will become evil.

The same is true of the Free Market.

government should be there to defend your rights. That's it.

 

[Ravi]

Hey, I'm starting to think I should dress up like a libertarian next Halloween.

Can anyone tell me what a libertarian wears?

 

[editec]

If the self proclaimed Libertarians on this board would like to explain to the rest of us what they beleive Libertarianism really is, I'm sure we're be more than happy to read their thoughts.

Now Kevin was kind enough to show us an example of what he believed was sound Libertarian thinking, and I took the time to show him my objections to it.

But perhaps other Libertarians here think they can do a better job of explaining it such that misguided people like myself will get it.

However, those of you who fall back onto the "What the Consitution says and nothing else" platform can save your time.

The constitution is so vaguely written and so elastic that most of us know that there will always be interpretations of its intent.

Please, by all means do educate us who have perhaps mischaracterized what Libertarianism stands for, and how those pricples are put into place GIVEN where we are starting from TODAy.

Don't give us some pie in the sky if only but, routine, tell us how we get to your ideal Libertarian community given what we find on the ground now.

What we find on the ground now is a massively wealthy class of a bout 1/10th of 1 of the population controlling about 40% of the wealth, the top twenty percent owning the majority of the rest, the working classes owning practically nothing, either.

So bear in mind that if we are starting from that massively lopsided economic state, playing fair (as you guys define it today) will mean, I think, that the vast majority of people will become essantially paupers, and paupers in a land which would probably, (if many Libertarians had their way) starve on the streets.

So show me I am wrong in thinking that Libertarianism is realy nothing but Scroogitarianism

Tell me how we can arrive at this idea utopian state where hard working people can make a living instead of what we have now where so many hard working people are essantially destitute and have no hope in hell of bettering themselves.

 

[Skull Pilot]

Hey, I'm starting to think I should dress up like a libertarian next Halloween.

Can anyone tell me what a libertarian wears?

whatever he wants

 

[midcan5]

Lord, if this is an example of Georgetown professors we are in real trouble intellectually. Such simplistic slop is only for the koolaid drinkers and other children. If government has had one fault since Ronnie, it is it assumed that markets left alone would bring good tidings for all.

Why I Am Not a Libertarian
Why I Am Not a Libertarian


Timeline of the Great Depression

[ame=http://www.amazon.com/Great-Depression-New-Deal-Introductions/dp/0195326342/ref=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8&qid=1230302046&sr=1-8]Amazon.com: The Great Depression and the New Deal: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions): Eric Rauchway: Books[/ame]

"They used to tell me I was building a dream, and so I followed the mob,
When there was earth to plow, or guns to bear, I was always there right on the job.
They used to tell me I was building a dream, with peace and glory ahead,
Why should I be standing in line, just waiting for bread?

Once I built a railroad, I made it run, made it race against time.
Once I built a railroad; now it's done. Brother, can you spare a dime?
Once I built a tower, up to the sun, brick, and rivet, and lime;
Once I built a tower, now it's done. Brother, can you spare a dime?"

 

[Tech_Esq]

If you dont like American government you can leave.

What you want will enver happen here. The US will never go to an unfettered market.

After seeing the effects of deregulations a couple of times now the history is set. There is too much evidence in our own history now that what you want doesnt work.


Democracy requires the peoples attention, there is no automatic setting.

The day you people accept this and actually help us come up with regulations that work and allow for growth and protection then the US will take the fuck off like nothing you can imagine. Until then we have you people trying to drag our shit into fantasy land instead of facing the hard realities and making the wise , adult and necessary decisions and performing the maintence on our regulations.

What you think will materialize with your ideas will never come to fruation. Time for the adults to make the right choices.

I don't see you around here, so clearly, you are not one of the adults.

Maybe daddy government should take your computer away from you because it isn't good for you. I'll scoot down North Capital Street here and ask an adult if they should.

 

[Ravi]

Hey, I'm starting to think I should dress up like a libertarian next Halloween.

Can anyone tell me what a libertarian wears?

whatever he wants

Oh, only guys can be libertarians? Too bad. Do you make your own clothes out of cloth spun from home grown plants?

 

[Modbert]

Sorry Libertarians but you don't get respect from the intelligent American voter by trying to pass off Bob Barr as a Libertarian. If he's a Libertarian, I'm a hardcore Sarah Palin Republican.

Which is one of the many reasons why I despise political parties in general.

 

[Kevin_Kennedy]

Whoever thinks the philosophy, and it's many variations, are completely synonymous with the party that happens to be called the "Libertarian Party", is a fool.

Go read a book or 10.

Your point is irrelevant. The article in the OP did not draw any distinctions between differing factions of Libertarian thought, it in fact did quite the opposite.

If a poster has a history of not only advocating Libertarian ideas, but also for the LP, then the LP is an issue. You don't get it both ways.

I find it amusing that the OP references the idea that Libertarians must resign themselves to being ridiculed and attacked, yet the two posters in this thread who identify themselves as Libertarian resorted to "confused", "fool", and "Go read a book or 10".

On a personal note, I actually want to see the LP succeed. It would be nice to have an alternative to the Democrat/Republican Party.Ticket splitting doesn't do much good when the two major Parties are ideologically indistinguishable. I have noticed that the LP in my area has been infiltrated by a bunch of Green Party rejects. It would be nice to have real Libertarians getting their message out. The prospects for that happening don't look good when real Libertarians start to distance themselves from the LP instead of taking control of it. Good luck with that strategy.

I called you confused because you did not advance the discussion in any way at all, you simply went off on a tangent about the Libertarian Party.

 

[Modbert]

Libertarians ARE loons when they demand cutting government to nothing. When they claim we don't need criminal law just civil courts to sue people that do crimes.

They are one step up from Anarchists.

Could you possibly have generlized libertarians any more?

You ought to THANK libertarians for supporting your domestic policies. At least that's not that many more liberals shitting on the principles that this country was founded on.

I'm a libertarian, and I DO NOT support cutting government to "nothing", nor do I support doing away with criminal law.

I don't know a single one that does, and I know a lot. I probably stand right with you on both of those.

Yeah see, this is one of the reasons why Libertarians had a epic fail in this last election coming in 4th to Ralph Nader.

One of the best way to turn off people from voting to your party is to insult them.

You can say some Liberals sure, but when you begin to generalize all us in one basket; fuck you.

 

[Kevin_Kennedy]

The government is the US.

We exsist because the founders designed a great GOVERNMENT!

Quit saying the founders have cursed us or leave the country.

Government is why America is great.

Government is why America is great? A government that takes half of what you earn, stomps on civil liberties, sends it's citizens to fight and die in senseless wars, and ignores the Constitution is why America is great?

 

[Tech_Esq]

If the self proclaimed Libertarians on this board would like to explain to the rest of us what they beleive Libertarianism really is, I'm sure we're be more than happy to read their thoughts.

Now Kevin was kind enough to show us an example of what he believed was sound Libertarian thinking, and I took the time to show him my objections to it.

But perhaps other Libertarians here think they can do a better job of explaining it such that misguided people like myself will get it.

However, those of you who fall back onto the "What the Consitution says and nothing else" platform can save your time.

The constitution is so vaguely written and so elastic that most of us know that there will always be interpretations of its intent.

Please, by all means do educate us who have perhaps mischaracterized what Libertarianism stands for, and how those pricples are put into place GIVEN where we are starting from TODAy.

Don't give us some pie in the sky if only but, routine, tell us how we get to your ideal Libertarian community given what we find on the ground now.

What we find on the ground now is a massively wealthy class of a bout 1/10th of 1 of the population controlling about 40% of the wealth, the top twenty percent owning the majority of the rest, the working classes owning practically nothing, either.

So bear in mind that if we are starting from that massively lopsided economic state, playing fair (as you guys define it today) will mean, I think, that the vast majority of people will become essantially paupers, and paupers in a land which would probably, (if many Libertarians had their way) starve on the streets.

So show me I am wrong in thinking that Libertarianism is realy nothing but Scroogitarianism

Tell me how we can arrive at this idea utopian state where hard working people can make a living instead of what we have now where so many hard working people are essantially destitute and have no hope in hell of bettering themselves.

I keep harping on this point and I guess I'll keep harping on it because it is the root of most of the evil Libertarians complain about. You can fix a large chunk of what is wrong in this country by the Supreme Court overturning U.S. v. Darby Lumber Co. (1941) that said in part:

The Court reversed the appellate court decision. It affirmed the constitutional power of Congress to regulate interstate commerce, which power "can neither be enlarged nor diminished by the exercise or non-exercise of state power." The Court argued that the purpose of the Act was to prevent states from using substandard labor practices to their own economic advantage through interstate commerce. In the Dagenhart case, the Court had made the distinction between manufacturing and interstate commerce, so that a business could argue it was engaging in the former, but had not intended the latter.

And return to the standard held by the Supreme Court in the long line of cases ending with Hammer v. Dagenhart. Where the Court said in part:

"The commerce clause was not intended to give to Congress a general authority to equalize such conditions," the court reasoned. FindLaw The Court added that the federal government was "one of enumerated powers" and could not go beyond the boundary drawn by the 10th Amendment:

In our view the necessary effect of this act is, by means of a prohibition against the movement in interstate commerce of ordinary commercial commodities to regulate the hours of labor of children in factories and mines within the states, a purely state authority. Thus the act in a two-fold sense is repugnant to the Constitution. It not only transcends the authority delegated to Congress over commerce but also exerts a power as to a purely local matter to which the federal authority does not extend.

The point is that without this curbing of power, the Federal Government will become all powerful and there will be no limitation on government. That is not the government that the founders created. The founders created a limited national government with enumerated powers. The bulk of the power in the country resided with the states and the people. With a liberal reading of the Commerce clause, there is no practical limitation on what the Federal Government may do in its name. Additionally, using the Supremacy Clause, the Feds can overrule any State law to the contrary.

I'll stop there. Do that one thing. That will be enough for now. Do that one thing and the country will be a 1,000 times more Libertarian than it is now.

 

[Kevin_Kennedy]

Sorry Libertarians but you don't get respect from the intelligent American voter by trying to pass off Bob Barr as a Libertarian. If he's a Libertarian, I'm a hardcore Sarah Palin Republican.

Which is one of the many reasons why I despise political parties in general.

That was the Libertarian Party. Many Libertarians did not vote for Bob Barr.

 

[Tech_Esq]

Libertarians ARE loons when they demand cutting government to nothing. When they claim we don't need criminal law just civil courts to sue people that do crimes.

They are one step up from Anarchists.

Could you possibly have generlized libertarians any more?

You ought to THANK libertarians for supporting your domestic policies. At least that's not that many more liberals shitting on the principles that this country was founded on.

I'm a libertarian, and I DO NOT support cutting government to "nothing", nor do I support doing away with criminal law.

I don't know a single one that does, and I know a lot. I probably stand right with you on both of those.

Yeah see, this is one of the reasons why Libertarians had a epic fail in this last election coming in 4th to Ralph Nader.

One of the best way to turn off people from voting to your party is to insult them.

You can say some Liberals sure, but when you begin to generalize all us in one basket; fuck you.

You are still confusing the ideology of libertarianism with the Libertarian party.

I think most Libertarians here will respond with a big yawn to attacks on the Party of the same name. Barr was no more a Libertarian than Newt was.

 

[Skull Pilot]

Hey, I'm starting to think I should dress up like a libertarian next Halloween.

Can anyone tell me what a libertarian wears?

whatever he wants

Oh, only guys can be libertarians? Too bad. Do you make your own clothes out of cloth spun from home grown plants?

No i buy them on the free market where they cost less and are of higher quality than those protected by tariffs or produced by union workers who can't be fired if they suck.

and excuse me for not adhering to the gender sensitive, politically correct, vernacular of he/she/transgendered.

now i expect to be able to correct you if you don't remember to write in the he/she/transgendered style as well.

 

[Modbert]

Sorry Libertarians but you don't get respect from the intelligent American voter by trying to pass off Bob Barr as a Libertarian. If he's a Libertarian, I'm a hardcore Sarah Palin Republican.

Which is one of the many reasons why I despise political parties in general.

That was the Libertarian Party. Many Libertarians did not vote for Bob Barr.

And therefore didn't vote in general?

But my point basically was that you can't generalize one group like Liberals into one basket. It'd be like me sitting there generalizing all Libertarians as Child Molestor sympathizers or some bull shit like that.

 

[Kevin_Kennedy]

Sorry Libertarians but you don't get respect from the intelligent American voter by trying to pass off Bob Barr as a Libertarian. If he's a Libertarian, I'm a hardcore Sarah Palin Republican.

Which is one of the many reasons why I despise political parties in general.

That was the Libertarian Party. Many Libertarians did not vote for Bob Barr.

And therefore didn't vote in general?

But my point basically was that you can't generalize one group like Liberals into one basket. It'd be like me sitting there generalizing all Libertarians as Child Molestor sympathizers or some bull shit like that.

Some will have written in Ron Paul, but most probably did not vote. I personally voted for Bob Barr, but not because I believed him to be an accurate measure of what a Libertarian is. If I had to label Barr I'd call him a Libertarian-leaning Conservative.

 

[Paulie]

A lot voted for Chuck Baldwin, too.

 

[Paulie]

I like how some can only write off the ideas of libertarians based on how much collective support they get.

I think I remember that happening to blacks at one time, and in fact STILL happening to this day.