You know why libertarianism sticks in the gums of a lot of Americans?

Because libertarians forget to censure what they decline to punish. And we also forget to bestow our approval on things we don't want made mandatory under the law.

Political freedom is all very well, but people mostly don't respond to bloodless arguments as strongly as they do to their revulsions and their sympathies. If you want their attention for your political views, you have to find a way to harmonize them, roughly at least, with their innate reactions to what they approve and disapprove. American libertarians have done a poor job of that, to date.

Ronald Reagan was able to sell the core principle "Government is not the solution, it is the problem".

American Libertarians have done poorly. Republican libertarians haven't done too bad. Ronald Reagan. Clarence Thomas.

The reason Reagan was able to sell it was that he did not couple the idea too closely to specific policies. Other than tax cuts. He was a pragmatist with a philosophy.

It all comes down to a philosophy of "mind your own business." It can't be implemented until the intellegentsia is weaned from the public trough.

Brett, a decade ago, I would have laughed.

However, with the sky-rocketing cost of education and the plummeting quality, there is a chance it will happen.

My bet is that when the current crop of professors starts to retire and pension costs start to exceed salary costs, there will be a major revamping of higher education.

We just need to suffer another 10-20 years.

I usually agree with you Simon, but not this time. Calling social conservatives a form of socialists does not make it so, and the point-of-a-gun reference is not credible. True, all legal sanctions are ultimately backed up by the power of the state, but applying that description to speeding tickets or copyright infringement would be immediately recognised as overheated rhetoric.

Social conservatives occur across a range - I don't think you would find many mandating public school prayers or exclusive creationism, though we do read of some. Most socons believe that all society's laws are a codification of someone's values, and there is no default valueless position. They refuse to be cut out of that discussion. In the matter of abortion, for example, society is going to draw a line somewhere between life and not-yet-life. Whether that is a hard line or a gradual one, it is still a marker representing someone's morality. Similarly, who can marry, the degree of authority one has over family members, and how annoying one can be in public all have values components. I would say that everyone is a social conservative, advocating to impose some values on the surrounding society - and a good thing, too. Not everyone recognizes their own "conservatism" on this, however.

AVI,

I know it hurts.

Think of this. The Drug War. A certain segment of the socons are firmly and loudly in favor of it. And yet it amounts to a price support mechanism for criminals and to top it off beer is harder to get for kids than pot.

Yes laws do codify values. And in fact the law actually has a name for this malum per se - evil in it self and malum prohibitum - bad because we say so.

Socons of a certain stripe tend to place less value on Liberty than on rules that enforce their comfort zone. A great example of that are Blue Laws - no business on Sundays. But what about Jews who are observant? They can't do business on Saturdays and with Blue Laws stores are not open on Sundays. So Christians are comforted and observant Jews are greatly inconvenienced relative to Christians.

It is the socialization of culture.

Economic socialization is not the only kind.

Yeah. Social Liberty is tough. People might do things that make you uncomfortable. Kind of like Free Speech. People might say things you don't like. Tough.

I'm a pretty hard core Libertarian. 9/11 made me a Republican. I'm reminded of Milton Friedman who said he was a Libertarian in philosophy and a Republican for pragmatic reasons.

I'm a firm believer that we would be better off regulating vice than prohibiting it out right. Yes, it is not pretty.

Or take abortion. A real hot button. I think that we are better off regulating it than prohibiting it. With regulation it is out in the open and you can actually try to change the woman's mind. Underground there is much less possibility of contact.

Or think of it this way. Suppose we allow the kind of socialism you think is OK and Muslims become the majority in a State and start passing laws to enforce their comfort zones. Do you see the danger there?

Or take pornography. We used to have National laws rigidly enforced to keep it underground. Then came videos and later the 'net and the government hardly even brings cases any more because you can't get juries to convict. In the bigger scheme of things it has changed very little.

OTOH it is tearing Islam, with its strict prohibitions, apart.

The less government regulates. The less government prohibits the better. I'm not an anarchist. I think we need some regulation. I think we need some prohibitions. But we need to think long and hard before enacting any of that. Too many people are too quick to reach for the power of government to solve problems. Socialism.

The Democrats want to solve economic problems with government - economic socialism. The Republicans want to solve moral problems with government. Moral socialism.

I'm generally against both kinds.

No, it doesn't hurt.

I tend to agree on most points, and regulation versus prohibition should be the first line of defense. However, 1) liberty is also a value. It may be a good one, but it is still a value, and one which you "propose to impose." To ideologic libertarians, imposing liberty seems a contradiction, but this ignores that all humans live in some sort of social arrangement. To impose liberty does not just mean that the individual has the privilege of doing what he wants. It also means that other people's choices (noise, custom, dress) are imposed on him. You may think that's fine (and so do I), but that's still a value, not a default. 2) In many realms, a line does eventually have to be drawn. At some contentious point, abortion becomes infanticide, or sharp business practice becomes predatory. There is ultimately no getting around it.

I don't know how you impose liberty - i.e. leave people alone.

Liberty is restraint on government not an imposition on the people.

And the Liberty idea is Judeo/Christian in origin. You know the Liberty Bell Motto.

Leviticus 25:10 Which would make it 2,500 years old at least.

Liberty is restraint on the government not an imposition on the people.

"Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add 'within the limits of the law' because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual." -- Thomas Jefferson

I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than those attending too small a degree of it. -- Thomas Jefferson

But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg. -Thomas Jefferson,

At some contentious point, abortion becomes infanticide, or sharp business practice becomes predatory. There is ultimately no getting around it.

Yes. The viability standard for abortion is not too bad. In Jewish common law the death of a fetus caused by intentional injury is a lesser crime than murder. Not a bad standard.

And the Universal Commercial Code has served us well.

A study of Jewish Common Law (whose ox was gored) would be a very good basis for a lot of our codes. Tested for thousands of years.

The Liberty idea of course meant the discharge of all debts and the freeing of all slaves and indentured servants. i.e automatic bankruptcy. But it forms the basis of how we think of liberty which has undergone some expansion since those days.

I'm against government imposing customs. What happens when the "wrong" people get the upper hand? You will get their customs imposed on you.

I'd rather let social obligations determine custom rather than government. Friday is you Sabbath - fine. Saturday - fine. Sunday - fine. You want to drink alcohol - fine. You don't want to - fine.

See how much easier that is than government imposing a specific custom on you?

The fact that so many socons voted for Huckabee is indicative of the depth of the problem.

However, I must add that I am a somewhat unusual individual. I don't mind being outside my comfort zone. But I also want the opportunity to walk away.