Libertarians want government limited to those functions which only government can do. Most of us would generally agree with police, military, civil and criminal courts, roads, management of limited resources and recognition of property rights. I am not referring to anarchists who want no government here who like calling themselves libertarians, I am referring to the masses of us who want government limited, not eliminated.
Fiscal polices. We want taxes, but we want them low, flat and for the good of the people as a whole and not used for income redistribution. The left are the extremists here not only punishing success and harming employers, but even using tax COLLECTION as a welfare program with refundable tax credits. We are moderates, taxes should be reasonable and to fund the government, not implement social policy. And spending should be within our means.
Social policies. Socons go to church (or other religious institutions) then go to government to implement morality by force. Clearly they are the extremists. Libertarians believe they should have the right to persuade people to live moral lives, they should not have the right to force their morality on them. We are, the moderates.
NeoCons. We want the military used for the defense of the United States. We don't want to be policeman to the world like the right, we also don't blame our troops for the failures of our politicians like the left. And we don't want them in everyone's back yard, like both sides do. We are moderates, protect and defend, don't use force to make other's decisions just like we don't want government making our decisions here.
Republicans and Democrats are just so deep into the question of what government can do to impose their social and fiscal wills on us, they have stopped even asking the question, should government even do that? Do we have the right to make that choice for everyone and use force to impose it on all our citizens? Libertarians are the moderates, that is the first question we ask, that is the right question to answer before proceeding any further.
Who would have thought Vladimir Putin's Russia was 'libertarian'...
Conservative Russia
People simply do not realize that Russia is a deeply conservative country.
Fiscal policy is buttressed on a low, flat rate of income tax (13%), and there is virtually no social safety net, with spending on unemployment security, medical provision, disability aid, infrastructure, the environment, and urban regeneration far lower, in both absolute terms and as a percentage of GDP, than its G8 contemporaries.
Similarly, military spending is high in comparison — and growing — medical care is available free in theory, but requires private insurance or additional cash payment in practice, and businesses are in reality pretty un-regulated.
If that doesnÂ’t sound to you like a set of policies Newt Gingrich or William F Buckley would support, then you donÂ’t know your dyed in the wool conservatives from your woolly jumper wearing liberals.
However, these government policies are generally matched by the views of Ivan Six-Pack. We had been led to believe by pinko sociology teachers in college that communism taught progressive views on gender, race, immigration and class, so it therefore came as a shock to find when I moved here that after 80 years of Marxist indoctrination, young ladies in Russia often reject feminism, men ooze with unrepentant machismo, and the population appears to generally support a penal code that could have been based on DostoyevskyÂ’s work.
