(no subject)

[heidi]

Cenk Uyger, one of my dorm-mates from my freshman year at Penn, is one of the bloggers at the Huffington Post, and this weekend, he posted an interesting exploration of some of the theorizing about government that people like Grover Norquest and Rush Limbaugh have been harping on these last two weeks - the question I have, especially for those of you who are, or have been, conservatives or more libertarian (the latter as I myself have been at times) - what are your thoughts? Anon commenting is allowed and although I'm still keeping IP logging on, I promise to not use it for anything that isn't an actual LJ ToU violation. I've seen a lot of discussion from the right recently that emergency response is entirely the responsibility of the local and state government, but if that's the case, when did it change? Can anyone deny that last fall when the hurricanes hit Florida, the government stepped in to help throughout the recovery process, and the national guard was there hours after the eye had passed? 4000 soldiers & airmen, my statels national guard site says, were activated to aid in disaster relief. In contrast, only 7,500 troops were activated to help in three states as of September 1, with a storm that was much more severe, regardless of the flooding aftermath. how does this make sense?

Also, those who've been passing around and reposing Larry Bradshaw's story, it's now in the New York Times, along with a confirmation by Arthur Lawson, chief of the Gretna, La., Police Department, "that his officers, along with those from the Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office and the Crescent City Connection Police, sealed the bridge." He had not, as of yesterday, asked his officers about whether any of them threatened people with guns or fired weapons over people's heads.

Comments

[cleverthylacine]

Okay, here's what I think. Socially, libertarianism makes sense. The government doesn't need to be involved in what you're allowed to eat, drink, do in bed. Although I do see a role for government to enforce labelling, just as it has always been the role of the government to enforce accurate standards of weights and measures--fraud is bad, and while I'm not going to stop people from eating things that are bad for them, they should know.

But the libertarian party has been taken over by a sort of vaguely Objectivist sort whose moral philosophy is Calvinism with G-d excised and Work put in its place, and those who don't Work (i.e do things that they get paid for) of little value--including children and the people who devote the majority of their time to caring for them, the elderly, and the disabled. Suddenly proof of your membership in the Elect is not G-d's favour but good luck: the fact that not only have you managed to find people to pay you for whatever you do enough that you can set a lot aside for your old age or your offspring, but also, that you have managed to avoid hurricanes, earthquakes, a devastating illness or accident, and all the other many things that can wipe out even a wealthy person's savings quickly.

I'm not a Libertarian. I'm a Republican. I haven't voted for any Republican presidential candidates in a long time because my views are minority views in terms of party leadership (I don't see what's socially conservative about denying people the right to get married or legitimising shacking up in order to avoid it, I am not Christian and never will be, etc) but the thing is, supposedly we're in favour of *limited* government, not *no* government. Ideally a social contract exists to serve the following purposes:

* to defend the society that it governs from dangers without and within (war, crime, and in the modern world where we understand the dangers of epidemics, viruses and bacteria too--I'm a health care worker and have argued conservative positions in favour of single payer health care before);

* to support the continuation of society in the face of large catastrophes;

* to keep people out of each other's private business and to adjudicate disputes;

* to prevent fraud etc.

The idea is that government exists to prevent human liberties and facilitate human enterprise.

If you ask me, the problem with both parties is not 'big government'--it's the legal confusion of corporations with persons and the insane idea that corporations should have 'civil rights' such as the right to participate in the political process. This country went wrong when it allowed corporations to participate in the political process, because they are so much bigger than people as financial powers and social powers. Essentially this serves to disenfranchise human beings, and sadly, my party is more in thrall than the Democratic party, but they are both pretty well enslaved and as no third party alternative has corporate backing, third parties are dead in the water.

But yes. By G-d, from a conservative or libertarian standpoint, dealing with Katrinas is what government is FOR. We're not (supposed to be) anarchists. We're supposed to believe that government is there to deal with the BIG stuff, not to micromanage our daily lives.