Question: Who Is the Meat in that Bizarre Jack Abramoff-David Frum Sandwich? Answer: D...
Nick Gillespie | November 1, 2007, 1:43pm
...rew Carey, currently defending medical marijuana at Reason.tv and hosting The Price Is Right and The Power of 10.
The UK's Telegraph has ranked "The most influential U.S. conservatives" and though Drew is not a conservative, there he is riding high in the list. A snippet:
38. JACK ABRAMOFF
Former lobbyist
Currently serving a sentence of five years and 10 months in jail after pleading guilty to charges of corruption and defrauding American-Indian tribes, Abramoff went from being the go-to Republican lobbyist in Washington to "Jack who?" as his former associates sought to deny they knew him.
Ordered to pay restitution of more than $21 million, his case sparked an extensive corruption investigation that led to the conviction of two White House officials, a congressman and nine other lobbyists and congressional aides. The stench of corruption was a key factor in the Republican mid-term elections defeat of 2006. Abramoff's unwelcome - for Republicans - influence will continue into 2008.
39. DREW CAREY
Comedian and actor
A libertarian more than a conservative, Carey, presenter of "Whose Line is it Anyway?", has been coy about any connection to the Republican party -which can be the kiss of death in Hollywood. "Just because I make fun of Democrats doesn't make me a Republican," he quipped recently when asked about his politics.
Has aligned himself with the Reason Foundation, a libertarian think tank which has started an online series called The Drew Carey Project. Held a "smoke-in" in 1998 to defy anti-smoking laws and has spoken out against the Iraq war. Embracing the libertarian label, he said: ‘You don't know what you are sometimes until someone puts a name to it."
40. DAVID FRUM
Writer
Canadian journalist and former speechwriter to George W Bush who helped craft the "axis of evil" phrase. An ally of the neo-conservative Richard Perle, he has been a prominent support of the war against terror and a convinced hawk on the Middle East. Prolific blogger on National Review Online.
Has just written a book on the future of conservatism, to be published in December, entitled: Comeback: Conservatism That Can Win Again. An American Enterprise Institute scholar, Frum recently became a foreign policy adviser to Rudy Giuliani and could well return to the White House in a Giuliani administration.
Whole list of cons--and one of liberals, too--here.
For a variation on Drew's quote about not knowing what you are until someone puts a name on it, go to the source--Time--in which he notes:
I never thought I was a libertarian until I picked up Reason magazine and realized I agree with everything they had printed.
More here.
Edward | November 1, 2007, 2:34pm | #
From the site:
What Libertarians have the luxury of doing is sitting back and saying "All the problems will be solved if we just let Jesus, err, property into our hearts, err, politics". What they do tactically is to focus on incidents area where the political process is at its worst, and peddle their snake-oil theory, contrasting the gritty reality with their pristine fantasy. Of course the fantasy looks better then!
The reason they get away with this is partly that there is no Libertopia, so we don't have a constant series of rile-'em-up stories to point out where Libertopia is an atrocity. Sometimes I think of writing a fictitious "Dispatches from Libertopia" for this sort of stuff. Such as:
"Today, Judge Rand ruled that the so-called "child-slavery" provision of the standard employment contract between MegaCorp and all employees was valid. As parents have the control of their children until eighteen, the signing-over of their labor until age 18 to MegaCorp was ruled a valid exercise of parental authority. Judge Rand, in his opinion, stated "The government is not to interfere with economic arrangements, absent a showing of fraud or force, as per the Fundamental Law of Libertopia. All parties with the legal right to contract consented, and that is the sole standard of evaluation. The fact that MegaCorp said it would fire any worker who did not agree to this provision is of no consequence, as that is entirely the right of MegaCorp."
"The separate individual child contracts were also ruled to be valid. Although the children were told if they did not sign, Mommy and Daddy would lose their jobs and the whole family might starve, this was regarded as simply the employer's right to hire and fire as he or she sees fit. No force, coercion, or fraud within the meaning of Libertopia Law was applied." Junior Warbucks, a MegaCorp spokesman, said "Do you make your children do chores? What's the difference?"
But of course this can be attacked in various ways, because Libertopia is pure fantasy, and the real-world rarely stacks up well to a fantasy, especially a political one.
A Libertarian can blithely argue that all problems would be solved by private charity, by people of goodwill, or if government would just get out of the way. It's a common tactic:
If there's a problem, our first question is not, "How can government solve this problem," but "What government program must be eliminated to improve this situation?"
Since there's no Libertopia, they never have to admit being in error and to what will happen under their proposed regime. That's a great debating advantage.
Franklin Harris | November 1, 2007, 2:49pm | #
Who was it who argued that conservatism is actually a special type of libertarianism rather than the other way around? I can't remember, but I'm pretty sure it was reprinted in an special anniversary retrospective that Liberty put out.
If you want to make yourself dizzy, trying to sort out the historical/ideological links between libertarianism and conservatism is a good way to start.
In the 18th century, libertarianism (i.e., liberalism, as it was then called) started as a reaction to conservatism. That continued on into the 19th century, when socialism started as yet another reaction to conservatism, eventually replacing liberalism as the dominate anti-conservative movement. (This may help explain how more moderate socialists ended up appropriating the term "liberal.")
In the 20 century, with the rise of socialism and fascism, you end up -- in the U.S. and the U.K. -- with an unlikely alliance of conservatives and former liberals (i.e., libertarians or "classical liberals"), made possible by the fact that many of the traditions the conservatives were inclined to protect were, by this point, classical liberal/libertarian traditions.
However, by the late 20th and early 21st centuries, conservatism had become infected by neoconservatism, a Trotskyite-lite philosophy brought about by various schisms on the Left, which I'll not get into here.
As the neocon virus all but replaced conservatism (you'll now find the old conservatism confined to The American Conservative magazine), the alliance with libertarianism became untenable, as all good libertarians have no use for neocon doctrines of "national greatness" and neo-imperialism.
So, now libertarianism is back to making strategic alliances with the anti-war Left, against the neoconservatives, while it's becoming increasingly difficult to make common cause with the conservatives even on economic issues.
One thing: Now that the modern liberals have taken to calling themselves "progressives" (a more historically accurate label, given their policies), can we libertarians go back to being liberals?
