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This will have nothing to do with stocks, or the market, save for peripherally, so if you want to “Move On” to another blog post, I won’t be offended. We are in electoral season, however, and I wanted to address a point that came up in tonight’s thread (previous post).
This would be the false contention that many registered “Independents” (really Dem leaners) will fall back upon in which they claim they are “socially liberal” and “fiscally conservative,” and therefore cast their vote with those precepts in mind.
You would think this would make many of them libertarians, then, no? Is this not the definition of a libertarian — that one only wants to be left alone, so as to better invest and spend their own hard earned lucre in the most beneficial and economic methods available to them? “Live, and let live,” so to speak?
And yet, largely rational humans will usually provide this explanation in order to justify voting for the greatest statists this country has ever seen. Totalitarian monsters like Barbara Boxer and Nancy Pelosi, who would not only interfere in the ability of these rational actors to save and invest their earnings as they might see fit, but who would also direct their private and personal health care choices from a top down centralized bureaucracy (see above), with little thought to the ultimate consequences such a system might engender here, save for its convenient use as a power aggregator.
I mean, presumably these same rational actors who claim fiscal conservatism have been exposed to other “top down” centrally-directed government systems at some point in their lives. If they are lucky, it’s only been the Postal Service — perhaps the most benign of our Federal bureaucracies. If they are in business, however, they may have had to reckon with the FDA, the Department of Agriculture, the EPA, or God forfend, even the IRS.
Can rational actors ever claim a pleasant experience from dealing with such bodies? And yet, these “social libertarians” will embrace politicians who seek to impose greater and greater bureaucracies such as these on our individual lives, as “the lesser of two evils” over economic libertarians who see such impositions on our freedoms as not only antithetical to our concepts of freedom, but highly impractical and inefficient for the growth and general welfare of our free society.
And why?
Because they have been led to believe that those same people who believe in basic Constitutional freedoms — the Founding principles, for want of a better term — over statist central authoritarianism, are also seeking to impose some kind of “theocracy” on their lives.
What is their main jambon of evidence? The now 40-year old abortion debate.
No question this is a hot issue, and I don’t think it’s going to cool any time soon, especially with the increasing advances of medical technology that drive external fetal viability to earlier and earlier stages of development. But it’s sometimes difficult for me to believe that intelligent and rational people cannot see the link between lovers of liberty and lovers of life.
Perhaps it’s because I’m a parent, but I do not even see this as a religious issue. It’s a moral issue, to be sure, but only in the sense that any crimes of violence against a citizen are moral issues. Just like an assault on a dog, or a horse, or any innocent creature would be considered a moral issue.
But because of some clever marketing, in certain “bluer” areas of the country, it’s become de rigueur to believe that conservatives are closet “theocrats” because they believe a gestating human life should not be considered extinguishable, and rather should be protected like any post-partum child would be.
Never mind if it’s integrated with a belief in economic freedom, private property inviolability, and the rule of law– a fealty to innocent life is considered an automatic disqualifier to a large part of the population who have been convinced this tenet marks a coming cessation of freedom.
The irony, of course, is that the greatest freedom eaters we’ve ever elected use this issue to trumpet their false “libertarianism.” In effect, they are providing our “social libertarians” a trade — responsibility for freedom, in equal measure. You will receive bread, you will receive circuses, and you will hand over the keys to your lives.
But if you believe in the freedom of the individual, you are given a responsibility to every individual. And yes, that means you are to feed the hungry and visit the sick. But it also means that you are responsible as a society to protect every innocent, no matter how forgotten… or inconvenient. I don’t think this means you have to be “theocratric,” dogmatic, or even the slightest bit religious (hat tip to Nat Hentoff, btw)….
Just “responsible.”
Time to shake that Baby Boomer “eternal kid” thing, people. This is part of it.
Kirk out.
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So it’s not
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