If you are against Big Government, you are for liberty. If you are for liberty you are also for free citizens’ right to choose whether or not they get out of their trees on cannabis, or indeed whether or not they have the freedom to terminate unwanted pregnancies or never, ever, go to church and in fact worship Satan instead.
Exactly right. (I should have added that it's the quote I identify with, not the Tea Parties -- though I have nothing against them; I'm just not a joiner.)
The most glaring omission of this somewhat insular campaign was the total lack of mention of the two wars, the debt they have and will incurred, as well as Gitmo, the Patriot Act, and the funding for the veterans who are wounded physically and emotionally. The subject of war is also missing from Mr. Delingpole's essay.
ReplyDeleteI wonder what our soldiers in those remote mountains of Asia think about Ameica's direction.
Obviously I was not referencing this piece for what it did not discuss. And I cited the passage that encapsulated my views. I lean toward anarchism. People seek office because they want power. I do not want people to have power over me. If the state can give, the state can taketh away.
ReplyDeleteI lean towards anarchism, too, but that is why I have no truck with the Tea Party. Libertarianism is not anarchism, it's its near-opposite. At least in terms of what motivates it.
ReplyDeleteAnd the Tea Party's basic motivation is anger at the status quo. They have no real plan for what to do about it, they're just angry. That's not enough to govern with, though, and I'm not holding my breath to see how well the government will work now. I expect a lot of angry gridlock and even more partisanship. I can't say that's a step forward. And it's the opposite, again, of anarchism.
Our soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines,for the most part, support the Tea Party and they tend to vote on the right.
ReplyDeleteThe Tea Party movement avoids national security issues, as well as conservative social issues, and concentrates instead on the government's (read Obama & company)intrusion into our free economy and the awful results that came from the Obama administration's actions over the past two years.
I agree with the idea of freedom that Frank embraced, with the exception of abortion.
One is not "free" to end a pregnancy, in my view, as that ends the life of the another human being. That's not "freedom, in my view"
I'm a conservative and I'm for limited government. We need government for public safety - the military, the police, fire department, various types of inspectors - and to regulate our money, but otherwise, less is better.
Our system of government's balance of power keeps us free.
Last night we returned to a better balance of power - thanks in large part to the Tea Party.
I think the mistake people tend to make about the Tea Party is to refer to it as the Tea Party. There is no Tea Party. There are Tea Parties. Like it or not, this is a coalition of grass-roots groups -- quite varied, actually --what Glenn Reynolds calls "an army of Davids." It may serve the media's purpose to portray these groups otherwise, but that does not serve the purpose of accuracy. This why we have to find out the facts for ourselves and not rely on the media. The internet is a great help, but old-fashioned reporting -- going out and talking with those who have joined Tea Parties -- is even more effective.
ReplyDeleteLike Paul, I think abortion is gravely wrong. But I don't think it wise to criminalize it. I do think it should never be publicly subsidized. You want one, you pay for it; the rest is between you and God.
ReplyDeleteMr. Wilson: my "glaring omission" remark was not a reference to your position state in your post, but to the campaign just past. I didn't understand why I never read or heard a reference to foreign policy (the wars) by any candidate.The essay by Mr. Delingpole reinforced my observation and I felt compelled to remark upon it.
ReplyDeleteWhen Rand Paul surfaced I thought he might speak of the wars at last but no. His father, Ron Paul, stands alone keeping the vigil.
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ReplyDeleteDear Mr. Hunter: My mistake. And a point well taken. Those topics did seem to disappear from the radar all of a sudden, didn't they?
ReplyDeleteConservative or no, values or no, if you believe in protecting individual freedom and rights, you can't pick and choose between them. The absurdity of many on the far right is pointed up precisely because they pick and choose between them. For example, yes on the freedom to own guns, no on abortion, yes on no taxes, no on gay marriage. That's cherry-picking between individual freedoms, and it's indicative of the utter lack of logic involved.
ReplyDeleteAnd why didn't they talk about the two wars that are the legacy of the Bush Admin? Obama didn't start those wars, he inherited them. And why didn't they talk about how to create jobs while cutting taxes? Reagan-era economic "trickle down" theories are thoroughly discredited, because they were given a chance and they didn't work—so why do they continue to be subscribed to?
What this all points to is that it's all driven by ideologues, and not by reason. Or by logic.
And now that they've thrown the bums out, will they be able to govern in their stead? I sincerely doubt it, because all we've heard is what they hate, and not what solutions they might have to offer.
I'm waiting to see the logic, and so far none has been convincingly displayed. Seriously, I'd love to believe there's some real logic behind all this. But so far, I haven't seen anything but fearmongering. And a few outright lies.
Hi Art,
ReplyDeleteYour argument on the abortion issue does not fly. For those who think it is killing someone, then no, freedom to kill is not an option, no matter how liberal or conservative anyone is.
The issue there is that the country has not decided that killing an unborn is murder. Until it does, then it must be the woman's choice, because no murder can be shown to have taken place. For now, for those men who believe that an unborn is a human being, they must stand at the sidelines legally helpless while women carrying their sons and daughters slaughter them.
Fortunately, this has not happened to me, nor am I expressing some surety that killing a fetus is killing a human being. Like I say, that is a decision that must be made by society. When the unborn somehow become more valuable and less disposable, then such economic force will probably be what tips the scales in how we view them.
Just as we men in Western culture accept women as human beings, just as we American "white" people accept "black" people as human beings, such that we cannot legally beat them and even kill them--which beings we award such protective legal status to is a decision we make, and never based on surety, because these matters are on grounds that are beyond the proofs of humankind.
The issue I have with gay marriage--and bear in mind that I had three grandmothers and one grandfather, as my father was adopted by two women, so this is very "normal" to me--is that gay marriage is a redefinition of the word "marriage" as it applies to heterosexual couples. If a country has religious freedom, then its government should not be in the business of saying who is married to whom, like Moonies do. If the state, on the other hand, dictates who can and cannot be married, it has stepped into the territory of tyranny, which governments too often do throughout history and around the world. For instance, our government has no business defining the sacrament of marriage to the Catholic church--and please bear in mind that I am not Catholic.
I liked the idea of the state only being able to grant civil unions, no marriages for anyone. This keeps the state from being in some disagreement with a church, whichever church, and at the same time acknowledges and respects what happens in the course of human events outside of churches. The marriage part would have to be up to the couple's church.
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ReplyDeleteSorry about those posts. I was receiving messages that the "request could not be processed," which cause me to try try again.
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