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All of your social programs go out the door...no Unemployment insurance, Medicare, Medicaid, all programs to feed or care for the indigent. How wonderful of a world would it be to live in a world where when you retire you bankrupt yourself because of your health, and die alone in the gutter? How many people now would be permanently living on the street because they lost their jobs with no buffer?
Worse that without the regulations that ER's must take people to stabilize their life irregardless of your ability to pay, if you are without your health insurance card they will turn you away. Without state regulatory boards to certify practitioners of medicine, how do you know it's not some paranoid schizophrenic in a lab coat?
Without a currency trade would stop. No one in California would want New York money. Translating the currency in each community would be an additional cost at each community just to pay for gas and food for the driver, let alone to pay for the item.
No regulatory agencies. The snake oil salesman would be back. Selling poison as cures to people who have no idea what actually works. Natural monopolies would charge whatever they please for their product. If you think the deregulation of power in CA was bad when they starting increasing prices, it's a drop in the bucket. Other companies would become monopolies or collude, robber barons would come back into force like in the early 20th century.
That's just a few points. I'd rather have a more efficient government with less waste, but not this way.
I think the libertarian movement is just a reaction to the swing to the socialist left, our country has undergone in the last 60 years. There is a happy workable middle in their, but the liberals want to push us off one side of the cliff, and the libertarians want to pull us back off the other side. We are currently standing on the edge of the cliff, and the liberal left is trying to push our country over.
If Republicans dropped the social conservatism from their platform, even I'd consider joining them; but as long as they're the party of social restrictions, abstinence-only-education, and creationism, there's a whole lot of us who will never be interested.
Exactly. The Republicans made a deal with the devil (no pun intended) when they brought the social conservatives/Christians on board. While admittedly a powerful political bloc, they are a just plain nutty special interest group that has made the party less palatable to a lot of people. Yet another example of how the neo-cons mismanaged the party and pretty much destroyed it.
I, and many other libertarians, do not believe that religious beliefs have any place within the political lexicon.
I think the libertarian movement is just a reaction to the swing to the socialist left, our country has undergone in the last 60 years. There is a happy workable middle in their, but the liberals want to push us off one side of the cliff, and the libertarians want to pull us back off the other side. We are currently standing on the edge of the cliff, and the liberal left is trying to push our country over.
The libertarian movement is a reaction to both the liberal left as well as the statist/authoritarian right.
Exactly. The Republicans made a deal with the devil (no pun intended) when they brought the social conservatives/Christians on board. While admittedly a powerful political bloc, they are a just plain nutty special interest group that has made the party less palatable to a lot of people. Yet another example of how the neo-cons mismanaged the party and pretty much destroyed it.
I, and many other libertarians, do not believe that religious beliefs have any place within the political lexicon.
I just went to www.gop.com, and what's the first thing I'm hit with?
"May the God of Hope fill you with all Joy & Peace"
ROMANS 15:13 NIV
This is my humble attempt to define what "libertarian" means to me. Why the vast majority of people are against such a philosophy is beyond me. Perhaps someone can point to the evil of human freedom and the goodness of human bondage. Again, what follows is my perception of libertarianism.
Libertarians believe that the ONLY role of government is to protect individual freedom. Abiding by this belief leads to the result of consistently following this creed without wavering which is the following. Libertarians seek to MAXIMIZE individual freedom while MINIMIZING government or state power.
Furthermore, libertarians defend this position with morality by asserting the following. There is no just force or aggression which is initiated which is not defensive in nature. In other words, force, whether by government, group, or individual is never to be used unless it is to defend individual freedom. Any attempt to force, threat, intimidate, manipulate one's actions or freedoms which is not in the defense of another's freedom is immoral and unjust.
I find 'libertarians' nothing less then "It's All About Me" corporate pawns.
You'll have your little box of freedom, while the corporation owns the box.
I find 'libertarians' nothing less then "It's All About Me" corporate pawns.
You'll have your little box of freedom, while the corporation owns the box.
You're right. It's too bad the Libertarians still do not realize, or discuss, the Corporatist threat to individual liberty.
They believe that because corporations use no overt force, then it is Rand's way.
The libertarian movement is a reaction to both the liberal left as well as the statist/authoritarian right.
I can almost agree with that, but the authoritarians, and statists are solidly on the left, the far right offers its own share of big government intrusion, and most of it seems to be from the religious right's desire to implement anti-abortion and anti-gay marriage laws.
Yep. These are the people who destroyed my party. It just makes my stomach turn. We need a new Goldwater.
The Neocons took over the Republican Party, and the NeoMarxists took over the Democratic Party, we need the TidyBowl man to flush them both, before they wreck our country any more then.
I can almost agree with that, but the authoritarians, and statists are solidly on the left, the far right offers its own share of big government intrusion, and most of it seems to be from the religious right's desire to implement anti-abortion and anti-gay marriage laws.
I believe that statists can come from either the left-wing or the right-wing.
What Is A Statist? (http://www.theadvocates.org/quiz-score/statist-whatstatist.html - broken link)
This image shows how statism is the opposite of libertarianism, not the opposite of liberalism:
(The red dot represents my score on that particular quiz.)
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