In the emailed version of the G-File today, Jonah Goldberg explores how the Occupy Wall Street gang is yet another example of why the fusion of liberalism and libertarianism (remember those arguments from 2007 and 2008?) are doomed:
If you never followed the debates over liberaltarianism, you can read this, this, or this, or this, or this, or this for a primer.
But the gist of it goes like this. There are libertarians who really hate conservatism and/or the Republican party. They like liberals for one reason or another. Therefore, they want to dissolve the conservative-libertarian marriage and get the libertarians and liberals hitched instead.
AdvertisementWell, what’s sort of fascinating about the Occupy Wall Street/Tea Party comparison is how much overlap there is between their complaints. Scrape off the 31 different kinds of Marxist mold growing on the surface of the 99 Percenters, hose off the stench of urine, bong water, and failure, and you’ll find a complaint that many Tea Partiers can appreciate: disgust at corporate bailouts, crony capitalism, and economic mismanagement.
That’s a major swath of agreement. The problem? The 99 Percenters’ proposed solutions and the Tea Partiers’ are absolutely incompatible with each other. The 99 Percenters aren’t against taxpayer bailouts — why would they be? They don’t pay much in taxes — they’re just against taxpayer bailouts of the wrong constituencies. After all, if Obama somehow forgave their student loans tomorrow, most of them would go home happy. They want debt forgiveness — and that’s a bailout. Meanwhile, the Tea Parties formed in no small part because, as Rick Santelli put it, taxpayers didn’t want to pay for their neighbors’ mortgages.
It’s really intriguing how the policy differences are informed by cultural differences. The twentysomethings haven’t paid much, if anything, in taxes and have received more than they’ve given. The Tea Partiers tend to be older and have spent a lot of time paying into the system. They resent paying for handouts. The Occupy Wall Streeters resent not getting them. And their definition of greed is not merely wanting to keep your own money, but resisting when others try to take it from you.
That’s a huge, huge difference.
Anyway, libertarians may be culturally “progressive,” but they aren’t economically. The protesters’ answer to the problem is more government and more bailouts, even as they trot out prefab arguments about self-sufficiency and getting away from materialism. (“We can charge our iPhones with generators made from, and running on, 100 percent renewable hemp!”) And yet somehow, the libertarians can’t explain to them that the reason government and big business are in bed together is that the government keeps intruding into business. Libertarianism is the answer, but these people refuse to ask the right questions.
It’s a shame that the libertarians can’t better exploit this as a teaching moment. But that’s just it, they can’t. Because psychologically, culturally, and intellectually, the Left is always going to be economically statist and egalitarian. Why? Because that’s what it means to be left-wing.
Libertarianism and leftism are — and here comes the vocab word of the day — incompossible worldviews for the simple reason that one simply means the opposite of the other.
As Kathy Shaidle wrote in 2004 when the majority of post-9/11 “liberal hawks” such as Christopher Hitchens and Andrew Sullivan abandoned GWB for John Kerry:
God love him: [Jeff] Jarvis has literally walked through Manhattan covered in human ashes, and is such a booster of blogs, and seems such a nice fellow. But at the end of the day, he’s a Boomer. And he and his liberal cohort are convinced Bush is gonna make anal sex illegal or something, so… Kerry it is!
And we saw the same thing played in 2007 and 2008, when Barack Obama’s pants and coolness won out over John McCain’s lifetime of experience. Social issues invariably shortcut logic, just as they’re designed to do.
Incidentally, the other day, Obama declared that America had gotten too soft and too uncompetitive. How would he square his (publicly tentative, at least for now) support of Occupy Wall Street’s trustifarian rebellion with that statement?
“The 99 Percenters aren’t against taxpayer bailouts…they’re just against taxpayer bailouts of the wrong constituencies.”
In other words, The Man’s Stash went to sombody else, not me.
Like many liberals, some libertarians’ hatred for any sort of social conservative issues drives their politics more than anything else, to the point that they will be willing to bend on their economic non-intervention principles if the Republicans nominate the “wrong” candidate. Those are the libertarians who in general put drug legalization above the idea of getting big government and it’s high-dollar programs out of people’s lives — gimme my doobers and you can have your 90 percent tax bracket on millionaires in 2013.
The situation’s not quite the same as in 2008, when many self-identified left-libertarians (hello Mr. Wegel) gave themselves over to Obama — like swing voters, they could say they were duped into thinking he would be something he hasn’t been since his election. To still be on that side in 2012, or to somehow claim you’re going to get the “Occupy Wall Street” crowd to come over to your way of thinking is either idiotic or disingenuous (and to risk forever being banned from working for ESPN like Hank Williams Jr., a libertarian who still thinks a second Obama term wouldn’t be as bad as a social conservative getting into the White House after what Team Obama’s done since 2009 is like a naive leftist in the U.S. not being figure out what Soviet Communism was about following the Hitler-Stalin pact — if you’re still supporting what Uncle Joe was saying then, you lose all right to say you didn’t know any better).
Regarding social issues, years ago when I was still sorta liberal I went on a business trip to a small town outside Houston. The town was in a “dry” county – only beer could be served although an exception was made for certain venues which depended on out-of-towners for business. I found this a bit bizarre but the point was made to me that that the folks that lived there didn’t mind and it wasn’t like they were demanding the whole country do back to prohibition, they just wanted their little part of it to be such.
That’s one of the big differences between a liberal and a libertarian, and why never the twain shall meet.
Those protestors have achieved the ultimate in cognitive dissonance: In 2008, they voted for the people who implemented the policies they oppose, and in 2012 they’ll do so again. They’re protesting themselves.
This contradiction plays out the way it does because people are motivated by their hatred of something that infringes their value rather than by creating value. Being motivated by the negative leads them to the false tactic of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.”
I have no intellectual respect for libertarians who pretend they have common ground with statists. The reality is the advocacy of abortion, mind altering drugs, and gay marriage dominate their concerns. Fear of the growth of government barely registers on their radar. These same clowns will either waste a ballot on a third party candidate—or even vote for Barack Obama in 2012. They will not vote for Rick Perry or any other truly pro-life representative.
I have common ground with only one kind of statist. The kind that uses the government power to prevent other governments from extending power. Consider the French government calling up their army to defend against Nazi Germany, or the US government investing in Ballistic Missile Defense.
Of course a “Letter of Marque and Reprisal” would be an alternative approach that I would also favor in some situations.
Spot on.
They aren’t really libertarians so much as libertines.
And eventually, many of them come around to wanting the rest of us not only to decriminalize, but also to support and accomodate and endorse, whatever behavior they choose to indulge in.
It’s not only government intruding into business, it’s also business intruding into government (rent-seeking). Both get something in return for screwing the taxpayers.
The “Veruca Salt manifesto and Flying Circus.” I believe that is the succinct explanation for our Wall Street rioters.
I’ve always wondered why libertarians like Virginia Postrel blast social conservatives for fighting against FEDERALLY FINANCED embryonic stem cell research instead of arguing exclusively for privately financed embryonic stem cell research. Could it be because venture capitalists know ESCR is a dud and this is the only way they can get funding for their pet project? It’s the same with the evolution debate. Just let local school boards teach whatever the hell they want and you don’t need to debate it. I think libertarians like Postrel show their true colours: their distaste for so-cons and religious weirdos trump their principles.
Virginia Postrel is intensely hostile towards opponents of gay marriage and abortion. She is a total secularist. I have personally had a number of mild confrontations with her in the recent past. Postrel will have to make a existentially tough choice in 2012. Will the pocketbook issues dominate? If so, she will vote almost exclusively for Republican candidates.
Its simple David. Hate.
And the proper response to that sort of person is …there’s the door, buh-bye.
I’m actually pretty hardcore libertarian on a number of issues, but its not and never will be enough. It doesn’t matter that a Rational Libertarian would be to the right of Operation Rescue for that sort, anyways.
The hate is strong in this one as Yoda would say.
There’s really no point in negotiating or trying to emphasize your bonafides with this sort. Just tell them to get lost.
On that last note: Obama is right. America has gone soft in his hands, probably the same way everything else in his hands goes soft.
THIS is the type of thing that Obama is encouraging. Soft in the head, I’d say.
Heh. Another version of the Judean People’s Front. Or was it the Peoples Front of Judea? I forget; but it was probably the one with John Cleese as co-counsel.
Trampling all those Monty Python copyrights. Who’d a thunk it. At what point do they descend into anti-social justice?
The freezeout of the vast majority of young men from today’s hookup culture makes socon alternatives look a lot less scary in comparison, as long as the socons themselves don’t jump on the making-it-worse bandwagon like Bill Bennett did last week.
A liberal/libertarian, or even a left/libertarian, alliance can work, as long as limited government maintains the pimp hand.
“The freezeout of the vast majority of young men from today’s hookup culture …”
I apparently am out of the loop on some basic cultural phenomenon. So: What the heck are you talking about?
I had a very large number of libertarian friends. Before 9/11, they were mostly Libertarian Party members. They were loudly (and annoyingly) not going to pick one of the two major parties. No way, no how.
Then 9/11 happened.
Since then, and it only took a few years, my libertarian friends have all gravitated towards either the Republicans or the Democrats (roughly a 50/50 split). The seriousness of the issues melted all the posturing away and left them realizing that they were a fringe, and that if they wanted any say at all in public policy, they had better get off the fence and set some priorities.
Only, here’s the funny thing. The ones who became Democrats very quickly adopted the entire leftie platform. Not just anti-war, or the social issues they already believed in, the whole she-bang: industrial policy, organized labor, bailouts and nationalizations, everything. They are now doctrinaire liberals.
The ones who became Republicans, though, stayed Libertarians. At least, philosophically. None of them switched from pro-choice to pro-life (yes, I know there are many pro-life libertarians– I’m talking about specific people I know here). None started opposing gay marriage or marijuana legalization. As far as I can tell, they haven’t changed any of their policy opinions. In the GOP primaries, they support the most libertarian candidate they can find. In the general, they vote Republican. They go to (or at least support) the tea parties.
It was a puzzle, but now I think about the fate of moderate or pro-war liberals post-9/11. And it’s much the same story. Apostates like Roger L. Simon ended up in the conservative movement. Some have changed a few of their views on things, but I get the feeling that, like Reagan, they didn’t leave the Democratic party, the democratic party left them– and to some extent, it happened partly because they were sick of the vitriol that the Left throws at the unpersons who deviate even the slightest bit from their dogma. The Blue Dogs suffered the same fate in the 2010 elections, abandoned not just by the independents who elected them but by a radical Left who isn’t satisfied by anything short of total obedience.
The war bloggers who stayed with the democrats survived there by abandoning the pro-war position and diving head first into the fever swamp to embrace the most radical crypto-leftist agenda they could cook up. Andrew Sullivan, of course, comes to mind here. He renounced his old views and adopted the entire dogma whole cloth.
So my feeling is that we’re writing the obituary for liberaltarianism. To the extent that it was a “Hebrew Christians”-style recruiting tool, it was a success. That is, predatory mimicry won over everyone in the Libertarian movement to the Left who was winnable. Remaining are the libertarians who want to stay libertarians, and I don’t see any way for them to keep their principles without remaining allied with conservatives.
Fortunately, conservatives seem willing to bend over backwards to adopt libertarian ideology, policies and rhetoric all out of proportion with their numbers. Which, as a libertarian-leaning conservative for decades, I’m pleased to see.
You make an interesting argument that matches what I had observed but not realized within my own friends. I have had a rather interesting political sojourn of my own moving from extreme religious conservatism to fairly doctrinaire libertarianism (assuming that any two libertarians can agree that such a thing exists and further assuming that they can agree on what it is for the duration of the argument in question).
It appears to the outside observer that there is not much room for dissent within the self proclaimed party of intellectual freedom. I know a lot of people who are active in conservative/libertarian circles locally who have unorthodox positions on more than one major economic or social issue and yet they are not only accepted but valued within the group. Among my friends who have gone to the liberal side, it is usually a complete transition with changes in every area of life necessary to achieve political harmony.
You are only addressing half of the equation. A number of the more conservative inclined libertarians did indeed start voting Republican because of national security issues immediately after 9/11. These people are also now worrying about their own pocketbook issues. They perceive Obama as hostile to their personal economic interests. They no longer can afford to simply “send a message” to the two established political parties on Election Day. The stakes are too high.
David, I think you’re right about what pushed them into their parties. What interests me isn’t that the libertarians who went Republican are still Libertarian pretty much down the line– it’s that every libertarian I know who went democrat abandoned all their libertarian ideals when they made the switch.
For the Libertarians who turned right, the change seems to be mostly tactical. For the ones who turned left, their entire philosophy changed, not just the votes.
Liberals and Libertarians are so freaked insane over the paranoid idea that ‘religious right’ people will come knocking on their doors Sunday mornings to drag them off to church for having sex that they cannot not see Big Government State-God stealing their lives and their Edison light bulbs.
Seriously Liberals and Libertarians, fear the Secular Theocracy of the State-God.
I disagree, and I think “libertarianism” as a philosophy is something of a strawman.
The common ground between conservatives and libertarians is pragmatic: the recognition that government power has not only grown beyond the limits specified by the Constitution, but beyond any reasonable definition of competent and principled execution.
Given the awesome success of the War on Drugs, and the massive expansion of the criminal code, do you really have to be pro abortion or pro pervert to be skeptical of launching a War on Abortion or a War on Porn? Can we maybe have, I dunno, a moratorium on creating new criminal legislation while we sort out the Fourth Amendment issues we already have?
The libertarian paranoia of the Theocracy is silly – so is the social conservative paranoia about Libertinism. The excesses of government power are real and unpopular enough.
I’m not sure what you mean by “Social issues invariably shortcut logic, just as they’re designed to do”. Social issues are a direct reflection of values. I think that abortion is wrong. I also think that homosexual marriage is wrong. Those are values which flow from my Christian faith. Is my faith “designed” to shortcut logic? Are my values designed to shortcut logic?
If I supported gay marriage and abortion (as a choice), wouldn’t those reflect my values and would that also shortcut logic? I say something is wrong and you say it isn’t, are we both shortcutting logic or just me? Suppose a libertarian declares that if a person wants to use herion that should be his free choice and a conservative says that it is bad for all of society if one person chooses to use herion. In such case is the libertatian using logic and the conservative isn’t?
The observation doesn’t apply to you, because you are (I assume) a straight-ticket conservative. You don’t have a choice to make. You either vote Republican, make a protest vote, or stay home.
For people who are on the fence, like libertarians (or, just for balance, say moderate-Democrat Catholics and union workers on the other side), the social issues are hot button issues that change voters minds by appealing to issues that are of strictly moral (or at least visceral) importance and – while I won’t say “unimportant” – are detached from the other issues and qualities that might sway a person’s vote.
I’d say the bit about social issues is why Liberaltarianism is NOT doomed. As long as there are Reason.com editors or people like Hitchens willing to vote for a proven advocate of a centralized state economics because someone on the other ticket talks about Jesus too much, the folly of Liberatarianism is alive and well.
Liberaltarians have a teen-age view of what liberty is. To them it means, “Give me the car keys so I can go do what I want.”
look at it this way: for a rational person, government intrusion into businesses is as idiotic and as morally repugnant as government intrusion into adults’ sex lives or drug consumption habits. which idiocy is more damaging is always a tactical question, and is decided by libertarians anew at each elections.
a feeble minded may see this as dithering.
Does society as a whole get to determine for itself what type of behavior is permitted in its midst? If a man wishes to have sex with his 5 year old grandson, what business is it of others if that’s what he chooses? If people wish to view hardcore porn 7 days a week, or use intravenous drugs before going to bed, why should others care? If each person lived on an island, no one else would care, but they don’t. What you do changes you, physically or mentally. A person who views that much porn is a differnt person than one who doesn’t. And these laws aren’t (usually) just thought up by the government and foisted on the rest of us. It isn’t the government intruding. It is all the rest of your neighbors intruding (via the government) saying that the lifestyle you want to live is not going to be tollerated. Can you have an ordered society where anything goes? Of course not. So then, what goes and what doesn’t? Someone is going to be unhappy with what the majority decides.
If libertarianism is ultimately incompatible with liberalism because of the big-statism of liberal economics, then it is ultimately incompatible with conservatism because of the big-statism of conservative social values, preemptive foreign policy, wall street bailouts, etc. Republicans and libertarians nonetheless had a long and successful (for the social conservatives) run, and therefore I don’t see empirically why it couldn’t work for libertarians and Democrats. Though I suspect that it might ultimately fail as well.
But, I wonder if big-L Liberal pundits like Goldberg are paying attention to the issue because they are trying to prepare the ground against the possibility of such a union. Democratism has failed, defined loosely as the system of crony government where we raise taxes or borrow money to fund some do-gooder programs on the way to rewarding political supporters from billionaires all the way down to the guys walking the precincts collecting signatures on a clipboard. The only way to preserve the gravy train is to try to shield these cronies and ride out the clock on the current economic crisis, something that would be much harder to do if there were libertarians ensconced within the Democratic party.
Therefore, even if it seems unlikely, I think that efforts should be made to create a libertarian incursion into the Democratic party if only to try and make it much harder for apparatchiks to preserve their gravy trains, at a moment of what is surely great weakness. The squealing of pundits like Goldberg only leads me to believe there is great fear of such proposals.
Obviously, you don’t know Jonah Goldberg or his work. Therefore you attached a context to it that doesn’t fit. He is kidna, sorta in the conservative camp.
I think the fatal flaw of “liberaltarianism” is tribalism.
Let’s consider what a “libertarian,” a “conservative,” and a “leftist” (I refuse to call them “liberals”) are, in straw-man form, shall we?
There is a lot of straw man thinking about what a “libertarian” or a “conservative” thinks, which generally contributes to a great deal of unnecessary ill will between the two groups which, at least at this point in American history, should be solidly allied.
The foundational concept of libertarianism is liberty–the freedom to do what you want with your person and your property. This has a corollary and limitation, which is everybody else has that same freedom too. Most critiques of libertarianism occur when either the proponents or the critics of libertarianism ignore or disparage the latter corollary part of the equation. (As a rather “conservative” kind of “libertarian” myself this never fails to annoy the hell out of me, but let’s continue. . .)
The corollary part of the equation is where conservative thought appropriately enters. Because people are people, there needs to be some social structure in place to regulate and moderate their behavior, because as anyone who’s actually paid attention to their dealings with other human beings over the years understands quite well, if you give somebody an inch, they’ll take a mile.
This is why the “anarcho-libertarians” are unrealistic utopians–they want to believe that if you give somebody an inch, they’ll be happy with that inch, and also that everybody will be able to themselves keep and defend the inch that they have. This is self-evidently unrealistic in the real world. But the anarcho-libertarians are the straw man “libertarians” that everyone thinks of when they say “libertarian.” Not all “libertarians” are anarcho-libertarians. Most “libertarians” are not anarcho-libertarians. Anarcho-libertarians, like most extreme groups, are just the loudest bunch.
Anyway, given that individual human liberty can NOT be unlimited in a functioning human society, the question always is: how do you balance liberty of each individual with the liberties of everybody else in the society?
This is where the “conservatives,” straw-man and otherwise, come in. For the straw-man “conservative” it is not liberty but continuity and order which are paramount principles for society. Usually, this continuity and order are defined largely by religious practices, but also by the body of cultural customs and mores that have evolved in society.
For both the straw-man “libertarian” and the straw-man “conservative” (at least in the modern American Christian iteration of “conservative”) the main focus is on the individual. For the “libertarian” this focus is intense, and a good society is defined as one where every individual has an equal measure of liberty. For the “conservative,” the definition of a good society goes beyond this to a more structured regulation of individual behavior so that an orderly society is established and will endure. But within that bound of establishing an orderly society, there is still a solid focus on the individual’s behavior and how it impacts not only their relations with other individuals in the community but also–again in the Christian context, how it affects the salvation of the individual’s soul.
Where, from a “libertarian” point of view, a “conservative” departs from propriety is where he departs from proselytizing, arguing, and convincing others of the virtue of the “conservative’s” beliefs, and begins using the structures of government to impose those beliefs by force. (Insert argument about your own personal hot-button “social” issue here.)
From a “conservative” point of view, a “libertarian” departs from wisdom when he obstinantly advocates individual liberty beyond the point where the “conservative” thinks that liberty is a benefit to an orderly, continuing society. (Duplicate immediately previous inserted argument.)
In my view, this is a constant and healthy tension. Libertarians are the ying to the conservatives’ yang. Both are absolutely necessary for a functioning, free society (even as much as both side’s straw men drive the other absolutely crazy.) Both of them, at their best, keep the other from going off the deep end into anarchy at one extreme and moralistic tyranny at the other.
(“Hi, Anarchist!” waves Conservative Moral-absolutist Tyrant Straw Man from one end. “Hello, C.M-a.T!” says Libertarian Anarchist Libertine Straw Man from the other end.)
So, where does “The Left” fit? (Again, I’m not going to call them “liberals” because that’s a perversion of the original term, the root of which is ‘liberty.’ We’ll go with “leftist.”) My observation is that the differentiating feature between a “leftist” and a “libertarian” is that while the “leftist” usually makes a great show of individuality, he has a worldview which is at once intensely self-centered and also profoundly group-oriented. You might even say tribal. (“It Takes A Village!”) While demanding a maximum individual liberty for himself personally, he only recognizes and values liberty in other individuals inside his own tribe, however he may define the tribe: Marx’s “classes,” by race, or anything up to and including the entire world. It is the health of the tribe which is the paramount value, not the success and happiness of any particular individual within the tribe.
Because the “leftist” is tribe-oriented, he believes he can and must do whatever he thinks necessary in defense of the tribe to anyone–within the tribe or without–who he thinks is threatening the tribe. (Cue “racism” slurs. Cue demagogical attacks on “the rich” and “the Tea Party”.) If his tribe is “the Earth,” he feels perfectly justified in doing anything he thinks necessary to prevent people from “killing the planet,” up to and including destroying the wayward tribe members by whatever means necessary.
The excessive tribalism of “leftists” is why “liberaltarianism” is doomed. Wayward “libertarians” who dally with “leftists” inevitably either join the tribe and adopt the strictures of the tribe, or they are repelled and return to their individualist philosophy.
But IMHO human history is a long struggle of humanity to rise beyond the primitive urges of tribalism towards more rational (and efficient) relationships between people. The real “great leap forward” in human history occurred with the Enlightenment, where both modern conservatism and libertarianism have their roots in classical liberalism. Leftism is, in contrast, a devolution and perversion of classical liberalism back to the service of the more primal tribal urges of human beings. It is the farthest possible thing from being “progressive.”
C’mon guys, get with the program. Anybody talking about “conservatives” is more than two years out of date. The game changed after the obvious distinction between social and fiscal conservatives became too wide for anyone but PBS to ignore.
“Social conservatives” and “fiscal conservatives” have very little in common. (Naturally, some people can be both, but that hardly makes the two identical.) Read some of the above comments but substitute either “social conservatives” or “fiscal conservatives” when you see the simple word “conservatives”. Either way, half the comments won’t make any sense, because the writer was assuming one or the other, but not explicitly stating so.
It’s just sloppy phraseology. And sloppy phraseology correlates with sloppy logic, which obfuscates the major difference between the two conservatories (Conservatories? Would that be right? “Philosophical schools of conservativism” seems a tad clumsy.) Social conservatism is basically a matter of ethics; financial conservatism is fundamentally a matter of mathematics. American society has time to argue and fight about ethics, but time to argue about mathematics is rapidly running out.
Oh, so this idea that we should not steal money from ‘the rich’ to benefit myself and others like me is MORALLY A-OK? Well, shoot, why didn’t you say so, dude? There’s this 7-11 down the street, and the convenience store owner has got to be rich, right? I’ll be right back.
Woohoo!
Free money! I’d feel guilty but Tom Swift told me its not immoral to steal.
It is not hard to figure out why the citizen left cannot ally itself with Republicans yet embrace aspects of one wing of the Republican part, the libertarians. At heart they embrace all things libertarian, including the economic planks. But as long as the Rockerfeller wing of the Republican party holds so much sway they just don’t ever see the Republicans delivering the libertarian goods, economically. So they appear both mixed and mixed up. But they are not. They are pragmatist first and foremost. Principles espoused by some group that can’t deliver might as well be a recipe for moldy cheese.
Faced with this seeming conundrum they have decided the pragmatic thing to do is to live free (libertarianism) off the government dole (pragmatic leftism, delivered).
If I am have pegged just 20% of these types of folks right, this represents a swing voter waiting for the Tea Party to deliver on it’s promises. Deride them for their fair weather friend style if you must. But, they will be your friend if you deliver the goods and not just the rhetoric.
As an aside, they would, I might guess, point to free traders having a fit over the congress’ attempt to put a tarrif on Chinese goods in retaliation over currency manipulation. They would only conclude that some free traders will jump ship if their Ox is gored, meaning they aren’t for real. Then they would wonder at the criticism leveled that a trade war with China during a recession would hurt jos while at the same time the same people would want to curb the one and only engine of the economy right now, government spending. Keep in mind, these are pragmatist first. Our principled rejoinders will be met with rolled eyes because there has been a selective abandonment of a free trade principle in the criticism of the currency disagreement with China.
“Regarding social issues, years ago when I was still sorta liberal I went on a business trip to a small town outside Houston. The town was in a “dry” county – only beer could be served although an exception was made for certain venues which depended on out-of-towners for business. I found this a bit bizarre but the point was made to me that that the folks that lived there didn’t mind and it wasn’t like they were demanding the whole country do back to prohibition, they just wanted their little part of it to be such.
That’s one of the big differences between a liberal and a libertarian, and why never the twain shall meet.”
Interesting – our dry county is due to the Republicans…and the Christian Conservatives. Had nothing to do with the Liberals …