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From: cramer@kontron.UUCP (Clayton Cramer)
Newsgroups: net.politics.theory
Subject: Re: Democracy vs. Autocracy: "Libert"arian's freedom?
Message-ID: <290@kontron.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 27-Jun-85 16:54:47 EDT
Article-I.D.: kontron.290
Posted: Thu Jun 27 16:54:47 1985
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> > I'd recommend this book to everyone, but RAH espouses things so far out of
> > fashion that the left compares him to the Nazis. Just imagine, thinking that
> > personal responsibility and meeting your commitments are good ideas. Not to
> > mention attacking the church, slavery, and espousing freedom in general
> > 	 > 
>  
> As I recall it was revolutionaries like Thomas Jefferson and the founders
> of this country via Revolution who first advocated freedom of religion and
> promotion of free ideas.
> It is right-wing Moral Majority followers who are advocating a return to
> religion stuffed down people's throats and book-burning.
>  
1. If you read what the founders of the country had to say about freedom,
you would see that while not radical libertarians, they were much closer to
the libertarian ideal than modern leftists, primarily because the founders
of this country supported individual freedom, not egalitarianism.  The most
egalitarian of the bunch was doubtless Thomas Paine, who moved away from
a support of unlimited democracy at least partly because of the abuses of
wage and price controls in Revolutionary Philadelphia.  (See _Thomas_
_Paine_ _And_ _Revolutionary_ _America_ for a little background.)

2. The enthusiasm for book-burning isn't confined to fundamentalists ---
a lot of feminist groups have been pushing for laws which restrict
pornography.  Their arguments are identical in nature to those of the
fundamentalists --- they feel that pornography damages the society as a
whole.

3. The fundamentalists are *not* traditional conservatives --- for all
the flaws in the conservative position, conservatives in this country
have traditionally felt uncomfortable with the Big Government approach
of the fundamentalists.  (That's not to say the conservatives, like the
left, haven't used Big Government occasionally when it served their
purposes.)  Significantly, the fundamentalists have their greatest strength
in the part of the country that has voted Democrat for a *long* time ---
and don't forget that the Democrats have only in very recent history
ceased to be the party of George Wallace and Lester Maddox.

> As I recall it was those "bleeding heart" "leftist" abolitionists who
> advocated the abolition of slavery.  The right-wing was content to
> hold onto its private slave property.
>  
The abolitionist movement consisted of radical libertarians; their first
attempt at politics was the Liberty Party, and I suspect most modern
libertarians could feel comfortable voting for the positions that the
Liberty Party took.  The abolitionists later formed the Radical wing
of the Republican Party, withdrawing in 1872 because the corruption
that swept post-Civil War America had thoroughly corrupted the Republican
Party as well.

Remember, too, that slaveowners argued for slavery based on the right
of the people to make whatever laws seemed appropriate; the abolitionists
argued that democracy was not valid if it denied individual liberties.
The slaveowners argued that the people were paramount, and could pass any
laws they wanted, even though these laws:

  a. prohibited slaveowners from freeing slaves without permission of
     the state legislature (showing that the Southern governments didn't
     believe in the right of property if "the common good" required
     differently);
     
  b. prohibited anyone, even slaveowners, from teaching slaves to read,
     again, with the same result as a);
     
  c. prohibited free blacks from making contracts (before the war),
     denying their right to engage in economic activity.
     
Of course, after the war, the Southern democracies proceeded to pass
laws "for the public good" that continued to restrict the rights of
free blacks to make contracts, own firearms, or be unemployed.

> As I recall it was the right-wing Joseph McCarthy who ruined the careers
> of thousands because their political beliefs differed from his.
>  
As I recall, Robert Kennedy approved illegal wiretaps on Martin Luther
King, and had the FBI roust steel company executives out of bed at 5:00 AM
to question them about steel prices.  Abuse of power seems to be built
in to slimy politicians of all ideologies.  (Remember LBJ?)

> As we have just seen "Libert"arians like Mike Sykora have no qualms about
> abolishing freedom of speech in favor of private property.
>  
This is a blatantly false statement.  Sykora, myself, and others argue
that freedom of speech does not abolish the right of private property;
the First Amendment guarantees that "Congress shall pass no law"; the
Fourteenth Amendment extends the protections of the Bill of Rights to
the states and their subsidiary governments.  Private property owners
are no more subject to the First Amendment guarantee of free speech than
they are subject to the restriction on "respecting an establishment of
religion".  Or would you argue that private property can't be used for
religious or anti-religious services.

> Who really espouses "freedom"?
>  
>                 tim sevener whuxl!orb

It sure isn't someone who wants the government involved in every decision
that individuals want.