Monday, March 2, 2009

It's the conservatives again



Rush Limbaugh, renowned conservative radio talk show host, announces that he wants Obama to fail because
his mission is to restructure and reform this country so that capitalism and individual liberty are not its foundation.
Great, Rush, so you're with us on abolishing the Fed? You're for private money, no FDIC, no FTC, no wartime inflation to mess around with Arab nations? You're against big government, so why do you seem so enamored with wars, the "health of the state"? Speaking of individual liberty, you're also for drugs?

Conservatives need to adhere to the principles they like to talk about or change their language. Conflation of state-conservatism and libertarianism is not desirable.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

"Great, Rush, so you're with us on abolishing the Fed? You're for private money, no FDIC, no FTC, no wartime inflation to mess around with Arab nations?"

I doubt that. ;)

"Speaking of individual liberty, you're for abortion?"

Oh, oh, "abortion" seems to be a critical point even in discussions between liberty-minded folks. For exapmle, I would consider myself to be a market anarchist, but I do not recognize something as a (natural) "right" to abortion. Abortion is killing and killing is an act of violence, the ultimate act of violence and thus not accepted by me. But to be honest, even so I don't accept abortion, I don't agree with puting a girl or woman into a jail cell for abortion. In my point of view, this is not the proper solution for this difficult problem. But what is the proper answer? In general, I would redline a woman, aborting for no good reason. (And I would redline a guy for forcing a woman to abort as well.)

Sphairon said...

Marco,

yes, most certainly, abortion is one of the many grey areas in libertarian ethical theory. It's basically where biology and ethics clash - while we would generally reject the idea of positive rights and obligations, not taking a positive obligation towards an unborn child has much more grave consequences than not supporting an adult.

I'd agree with your solution, while it's not justifiable to initiate force against someone who aborts or promotes the idea, careful discrimination should be employed to make sure that "getting rid of pregnancy the easy way" does not become the default approach. After all, it's not just an unfortunate solution for the child, it's often a depressing and burdensome experience for the mother as well.