Libertarian vs. Conservative

I spend a lot of time at various public events manning what we call an OPH booth (Operation Politically Homeless). We ask people to take a short quiz and then use the results to place them on a chart that shows a political spectrum. Our point being that the simple left right line is totally inadequate to show most people. If interested, you can take the quiz online at www. self-gov.org.

I often hear the question-What is the difference between conservatives and libertarians? That question is getting harder and harder to answer because the definition of conservative is so fluid. It changed drastically during the administration of W.

Nevertheless, as a minimum we can say that Libertarians agree with conservatives on most economic issues and probably free speech and press. Beyond that, there is way to much variation among conservatives to make a definitive statement.

Do conservatives believe in due process. For the most part, sure but they were easily swayed to ignore that for alleged terrorists. Thus they gave a totally unacceptable power to government to name someone as a terrorist without the need to prove the facts. We still have hundreds of prisoners in GITMO and BAGRAM whose guilt is still unknown but whose time in prison is many years. Libertarians find this not just shameful but horribly dangerous.

How about gay marriage and all the other issues around homosexuality? Libertarians are true to the freedom philosophy here. Adults may make any living and/or loving arrangements they please without interference from the state. Conservatives apparently put their ideas of a proper society ahead of freedom on this issue.

The longest running debate is about the drug war. Libertarians have always advocated personal freedom. We recognize the massive damage done to people and society from attempting to prohibit the use of mind altering substances. We learned the lesson of alcohol prohibition all too well. Conservatives believe that they have a right to tell other people what they may use for enjoyment and apparently just refuse to learn from the alcohol prohibition disaster. Indeed, I am sure there are some that would want to try alcohol prohibition again, just with more police this time.

Right now, this looks like irreconcilable differences. One can only hope that people who are basically freedom lovers will realize that there is no compromise of freedom with tyranny possible.

If you would have freedom for yourself, you must grant similar freedom for all others!

Do you really think that your freedom to practice Christianity, for example, would survive if you allowed the government to ban some other religion that you found distasteful? Once such decisions are in the hands of the government, even a democratic one, the allowed religions become a matter for majority vote. That is definitely not commensurate with freedom.

YOU WANT TO LEGALIZE DRUGS! ARE YOU CRAZY?

In America, everyone knows that drugs are the worst possible things on Earth and we must do everything possible to prevent people of any age using those terrible things.

As a result, we as a nation have spent many decades trying to arrest ourselves out of drug usage.

• We have more of our population in jail than any other nation in the world, even those evil Godless Communist dictatorships.
• We routinely kill people during no-knock raids because we fear that those dastardly druggies will flush the evidence down the toilet.
• We deny sick people access to useful medicine because they might enjoy it.
• Our government has even shot down a private plane full of missionaries in the Andes because it was flying a course that drug couriers often flew.
• Tobacco kills 400,000 people a year but is legal for those 18 or older. Alcohol kills over 100,000 people a year but is legal for those 21 or older. Marijuana has never killed one person in all of human recorded history but is illegal for everyone. It is responsible for three quarters of a million arrests a year.
• By continuing this War on Drugs, we make a common weed more valuable than gold by weight and enrich a whole industry of growers, transporters, sellers, police, prison guards, prison builders, and prosecuting and defense attorneys.
• The cost to society is on the order of $100 billion per year when you include the lost productivity of those poor souls rotting in jail for nothing.
• Your children are placed in danger from the law if they chose to engage in harmless experimentation. There is nothing that marijuana can do that is anywhere near what an arrest can do to your child’s future.
• We, all of us, are placed in danger of drug related crime needed to pay the black market prices of "illegal" drugs, or to settle disputes between dealers who cannot use the courts.
  
  If you want to live in a free nation, it has to be free for everyone. If you want to be free to go to a church of your choice, drink an occasional cocktail, go to political meetings, smoke cigarettes or whatever you might like to do that someone else might think wrong, then you must support similar freedom for everyone else. If you want to be secure in your home and not have to worry about a dangerous no-knock search by police based on the word of paid informers or personal enemies, then help us end the insane War on Drugs.
  
  We tried, in the last century, to prohibit alcohol. It did not work out, did it? Alcohol use increased, we created a criminal underworld to supply it and locked up a bunch of people. It is time to rethink the anti-drug paradigm and restore freedom for us and future generations. In the process, we will put the seedy underworld that now supplies drugs out of business overnight.