Tom, the way you phrase the question is so slanted and ideologically biased that it's in the same class as "when will you stop beating your wife?". The genuine difference is over the degree of mutual responsibility between a citizen and his society. The Libertarian view is that the citizen has no responsibilities, the traditional liberal view is that there's a mutuality of responsibility, and it's only at the extreme of communism that the balance vests power so strongly in the State. Then there's the classic Republican view: Citizens and the government are both beholden to business. And finally, the neoconservatives think that the citizen should serve the purposes of an expansionist State.
You must find it rather uncomfortable, as a Libertarian, to fiercely support a neoconservative President and a Republican Party hijacked by the neocons. It's not really a mystery why Bush has expanded the government so dramatically, and is willing to run deficits as far as the eye can see, all in service of an agressive and expansionist State. Whatever happened to that principled Libertarian isolationism?
Current Events » in reply to re: No paradox at all.
So many paradoxes, so little time
The whole thread (31 posts)
- David Neiwert: 'The political and the personal'
- Is he really so clueless?
- Oh, yeah. A call for conservative moderation, tolerance and civility from the "Smirking Chimp" web site. (n/t)