The result of Chaos and Anarchy.
Sticking your head in the sand in the end will result in the same Totalitarianism, our Opponents are heading for. Individual Liberty feeds Freedom. Authority, uncontrolled feeds absolutism, inevitably. The snowball rolling down hill syndrome must be addressed, not ignored.
I see, so in order to "prevent" anarchy and protecting freedom the conservatives believe in creating a gargantuan tyrannical police state which ignores individual rights .
That my friend is the definition of Orwellian doubletalk.
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No. Not me. I'm thinking Assertive, not Aggressive. We distinguish between Right and Wrong, and encourage Right Action. We don't ignore Threat. Ignoring Problems does little to rectify and maintain balance, be it World Affairs or Drug Addiction, we can do more than stand by.
Exactly. If a Catholic community does not want an abortion clinic, they should be able to collectively decide they don't want an abortion clinic in their community. They are deciding for their own conscience and quality of life, however, and not deciding for anybody else.
If a community doesn't want open saloons or big box stores in their community, they should be able to zone in a way to restrict such. They are deciding for their own aesthetic sensibilities and not deciding for anybody else.
I believe the realistic definitions for these terms as they exist in America today, in their most basic state for each group:
Conservatives don't want blanket rulings about such things made from the federal level or often even from the state level, but in the conservative concept of freedom, people should be allowed to organize themselves into whatever sort of society they wish to have short of violating anybody else's unalienable rights. Mind you that it is not the government deciding such things, but the people themselves who then entrust the government to enforce their bidding.
Libertarians would more often oppose zoning laws or restrictions on what kinds of businesses should go into a community or other components of social contract. They want individual liberty and rights defended and to them that requires a totally open and permissive society. They do not trust government but somehow seem to trust lawyers to protect their rights.
Liberals want a strong central government to assign what rights the people will have everywhere, to deny people the right to restrict what the liberals approve and deny people the right to implement what liberals disapprove.
Both Conservatives and libertarians agree that if property rights are not sacrosanct, there is no freedom. Therefore nobody has any right to our property no matter how great their need unless it is voluntarily given.
Liberals are more likely to see the collective wealth of the people as belonging to all to be distributed as fairly and humanely as possible and give government complete authority to make such decisions.
Conservatives and libertarians understand and embrace a concept of no king or authoritarian government ruling and deciding for the people, but rather a free people governs itself. Their only disagreement is in their somewhat different concepts of what self governance looks like.
Liberals do not trust or tolerate the people governming themselves, but look to government to decide for the people.
