Nuts. Does this mean that I missed my liberal phase and my liberterian phase?

Um, if there aren't any libertarians in the "unemployment line," it's because libertarians don't believe in taking money that's been coerced from other people -- including government unemployment checks.

So while you screwed up the metaphor, we get your point: Libertarians are safe being libertarians. Their personal circumstances make it OK. They hold their principles only because they can afford to.

You seem to be presuming, too, that once folks are in a position of want, they'll abandon their principles because they'll realize they need the "social safety net." Maybe that's the way you work -- maybe your core beliefs are vulnerable to whimsy -- but it's not the way the libertarians I know operate.

Indeed, I'd prefer to live destitute in a society that's free than to live wealthy in one that's not. My principles aren't circumstancial. I've been through mighty hard times in my life, financially and otherwise, and it has never even crossed my mind to sanction the forced redistribution of other people's money.

Aren't you a big religious guy? (I don't mean that you're physically large; I mean, isn't religion a big part of your life... .) If so, why can't you be satisfied with the idea of voluntary charity, of people helping people without forcing each other to do it via legislation? Can't you see that mandating charity through taxation is theft?

That's not some half-baked bumper-sticker thinking from a "young white technocrat." That notion is at the very root of the American idea. It took centuries for man to understand and exalt freedom, centuries that culminated in the founding of America.

Why are you and others so eager to chip away at that? Why do you want to help take it away? Don't you realize how much was invested in getting to that place? Don't you realize how fragile it was? Don't you realize that a mere two centuries later, we need to still be doing all we can to cement the idea of freedom as the most important state for man?

"Conservatives" should be determined to conserve that -- not to conserve the watered-down version that emerged in the 20th century. When it comes down to it, today's Republicans are essentially co-opting the word "conservative." They have stolen the word in the same way that socialists stole the word "liberal" way back when. They want to "conserve" the big-government welfare state those same socialists fixed into place over the past few decades -- which they managed to do only because their opponents engaged in the same sort of compromises and "political pragmatism" you applaud today.

You write often in favor of this political pragmatism -- "reality" over "fantasy," as you've characterized it in this post. It's not melodramatic or hyperbolic to thank God the founding fathers and fighters in the American Revolution weren't content with reality. Libertarianism in 1776 certainly wasn't the province of "young white technocrats" who grew out of it -- it was the province of people who gave up their lives for it. And if their quest for freedom was the stuff of "fantasy," then I'll gladly take fantasy over your pragmatic "reality" any time.

An honest question: Do you fancy yourself wiser than the Founders? Maybe you do, and for some good reason; most notably, they didn't see that blacks and women should be free. On that count, we're certainly wiser than they were. But that particular wisdom is one that expands on the basic principles of freedom. It's not one that tears away at it.

So I'm curious if you think they were also misguided about other stuff, if you think you're more enlightened than they were about a government "social safety net," for instance. You seem to spot a need for something they never spotted. Is this because you're wiser? Did they just screw up -- did they just have a blind spot -- and so now you're out to correct their mistake?

Tom:

No, this is pretty much exactly what they envisioned, that freedom would give way to some considerable extent to the majority's desire for security. That trend is inherent in democracy.

I think Orrin's point is that a majority (a vast majority) wants a social safety net of some kind. And, this being a democracy, that's what they're going to get. The question now is, what kind of a net is it going to be?

Sure, maybe that's what they "envisioned" -- the whole "if you can keep it" thing -- but it's not what they wanted. In essence, you're saying the founders recognized that freedom was fragile, and could be eroded over time, and that you're satisfied to participate in this erosion.

You guys are smart, and you want democracy over freedom. Frankly, that's pretty depressing.

Seriously: Who cares what "the majority" wants? The "majority" can go build a social safety net on their own if they want it. But they don't have the right to extract dollars from my pocket or your pocket to do it. The "majority" of Americans like watching television, too -- is it OK for them to take our money to buy TV sets?

I mean, don't you see the danger in your elevation of democracy over individual liberty?

Tom;

Yes, therefore I oppose democracy. When do you think folks like us will succeed in getting rid of it...?

In the meantime, were libertarianism not more fixated on dope than on the doable, we could work together to give the majority what it wants--a safety net--but in a way that serves the ends of liberty: privatized, self-funded, etc.

That's what finally turned me totally off with the Libertarians. Their continual harping on making dope legal. Maybe it's importatant, maybe it's not---but anybody who makes it their number one issue is just showing how unserioous they are.

Oh, and their ongoing obsession of making the perfect be the enemy of the good.

Someday we'll be able to eliminate democracy, which is a constant threat to freedom. But just as it took millennia of human thought to get to the 18th century, it's still gonna take a while before we're at that point.

I just think it's crucial to remember that democracy is merely a means to an end. It's not an end unto itself. That part really trips up a lot of Americans. I'm sure if there were a better available mechanism for preserving and ensuring liberty, the founders would have jumped on it. As it was, I doubt that in the 1780s they seriously suspected an American majority would ever vote any way but in the name of freedom. If America was indeed an "experiment," that particular test has certainly proved a failure.

Libertarians aren't obsessed with drugs per se. You know that. It's just that the federal government has made the drug war one of its most visible campaigns against liberty and justice. Thus libertarians aren't "fixated on dope"; they're fixated on the government's fixation. You know that.

It's about the principles involved, not the drugs themselves. You know all that, OJ, but you pretend anyway that people can't chew gum and walk at the same time. If the justification for privatizing the safety net is that a government safety net encroaches freedom, and encroaching freedom is bad, then it's perfectly logical to fight other encroachments of freedom, among which is the war on drugs.

Tom:

Freedom too is merely a means. The end is a decent society. A safety net makes us more decent than the lack of one. The question is how to sew the net.

Very well said. Orrin's demographic picture of libertarians seems right on the money. Personally, I think it's a good phase for a young man to go through, much better than being a youthful Marxist, but it's still a phase that most of us outgrow with maturity, as we begin to understand both the burden of responsibilities for a wife and children, and as we come to understand better how the world works and the usefulness of government.

Very well said. Orrin's demographic picture of libertarians seems right on the money. Personally, I think it's a good phase for a young man to go through, much better than being a youthful Marxist, but it's still a phase that most of us outgrow with maturity, as we begin to understand both the burden of responsibilities for a wife and children, and as we come to understand better how the world works and the usefulness of government.

Orrin,

It seems as though young white successful
techies are quite happy to describe themselves
as libertarian (it's kind of a refuge). This
may be just the public face of what is actually
budding conservatism.

If you have a normal life (house,kids,dog, maybe
go to church once in a while) there's really
no point in playing around with that Ayn Rand
nonsense.

This is so odd. All you guys keep talking about Ayn Rand, someone who explicitly disassociated herself from the word "libertarian" and whose adherents are called Objectivists.

I've never read an Ayn Rand book in my life, and to my knowledge, neither have any of the other libertarians I know. Orrin Judd's description of libertarians WASN'T "right on the money." The description I outlined in my several posts is the right one.

Tom:

Whatever libertarianism is it does not include removing the right to vote from folks who don't sufficiently support what you want. That's conservatism.

Come again?

(And that's not just a joke about your double post.)

Tom:

Interesting debate. But what is the philosophical source of your extreme love for individual freedom? Efficient? Fit? Moral? Happiness? I must say that the libertarians I have followed strike me as being as ideologically frozen and rote as the far left.

The US DID try voluntary charitable giving... It resulted in the New Deal and the Great Society.

The only way that "voluntary" works, is if it's defined as voluntarily JOINING a coercive system - Like joining the military.
It's a choice to join, but once in, you're stuck, for a certain period.