Monday, September 15, 2008

Libertarians vs. Liberals

Let’s consider the liberals and the libertarians. It’s a funny thing to consider really.

LIBERALS are generally aligned with the Democratic Party. This is a generalization; there are other parties of course, but for the sake of argument deal with me. Ok so the Democratic party is very broad. It has no boundaries, because it cannot, it applies itself to the constituency of many social groups, all of which consider themselves liberal. The Dictionary (Dictionary.com Unabridged) defines liberal as, favorable to or in accord with concepts of maximum individual freedom possible, esp. as guaranteed by law and secured by governmental protection of civil liberties, or favoring or permitting freedom of action. The Democratic Party has no specific base or crowd because it claims a desire to permit personal freedoms and how could you define a crowd of individuals right? The catch is in the definition though, “secured by governmental protection.” So they become less individualistic as the essay goes on. Now there uniting quality is the promotion of governmental action. The Democrats and liberals all see the securing of rights to be found most assuredly in government intervention. How exactly does one secure personal freedoms by government mandate? You cannot govern morality. You cannot govern free will. You cannot change a mind by changing a law, yet the policy toward securing personal freedom is through use of the government as your advocate. That sounds great on paper does it not? The government, as Democrats and liberals see it, says, “You go ahead and be who you want to be, and I’ll make sure nobody can do anything about it.” I must admit, it sounds almost pleasing to my ears.

Yay though I walk through the valley of idealism I will not bow to this rhetoric.

The government in this instance attempts to protect five thousand people groups with ten thousand laws and only provides greater national debt to enforce the laws and develops new problems because by freeing one group another is encumbered. ‘Tis the greatest lie ever told that governmental intervention meant freedom.

The LIBERTARIAN on the other hand may align himself with the Republican Party, Libertarian Party, or another lesser-known party oft on the state level. The libertarian agenda, if you can call it that, seeks personal freedom. The Libertarians greatest roadblock is in fact government, as it seeks to involve itself in too much. The Libertarian can in fact belong to many people groups, be of many different faiths, or ethical schools of thought. The uniting factor is liberty, but not a liberal/ Democrats liberty. The libertarian’s liberty is derived from cinching up government and anchoring to a short tether. Freedom is found through use of the market and determination. Freedom is secured by keeping the governments fingers out of your life. The outlook remains, if government ever gives you something you have already or soon will pay for it. This can be seen easily with recent events. The 2008 tax rebate was the taxpayers hard earned money, before it was ever handed back to their wallets. The money just came out the taxpayers paycheck at some point, and oh how grateful we are that the good old government was so nice and gave us some of our hard earned money. The government just re-gifted our hard earned cash. If you know anything about Seinfeld (a gem of a 1990’s sitcom) you know about re-gifting, and how infuriating it is.

Plain and simple all the government can give is what we have already contributed to the government.

I think you know what side I am on it’s fairly obvious. It’s like I told a friend the other day, The Democratic Party in this hand says, “We want you to succeed, so we’ll do it for you, so you don’t have to.” In the other hand The Libertarian Party says, “We want you to succeed so we will get out of the way.”

With this I am done, Ronald Reagan once said, “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, "I'm from the government and I'm here to help.”

How right he was.

Austin Sense

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