Forget Libertarians vs. Conservatives

A better way of thinking about it, Matthew Yglesias argues, is anti-state vs. anti-left.

Comments

[Lowdog]

Hmm, interesting piece. And I do think it makes some sense. But I was way more lefty when I was younger and I've always been quite an individualist (whether I knew it or not), so it shouldn't be too hard to discern that I'm an anti-state person and not an anti-left person.

[SPD]

Big Brother is Big Brother, whether he wears wing-tips or Birkenstocks. This is an excellent piece with a long-overdue distinction for those of us who consider ourselves l/Libertarians, but didn't know how to explain it to our conservative Republican friends and family without resorting to "Well, we like guns AND pot!"

[Cameron]

I find that being anti-state still requires a person to be somewhat anti-left, and I say this as someone who migrated to libertarianism from the left. I'll grant you that there is little to love in the current right, as they seem to have no real problem any more with leviathan. However, their hearts are not in it the same way that leftist's hearts are in it. Right-wingers like the State because they're shady bastards; left-wingers love the State as a matter of principle.

[Jesse Walker]

I don't agree, Cameron. Just as there are conservatives who are about 80% libertarian -- Jim Antle staked out that position in the debate in D.C. earlier this week -- I also think there are people on the left who are about 80% libertarian. They're less visible because they aren't Washington-oriented, they're more likely to write about culture or science than politics, and their articles are more likely to show up in Wired or the Whole Earth Catalog than in The Nation or The American Prospect.

[ILAH DUNLAP LITTLE]

In my view, Bush is still more leftist than he is a conservative by any definition.

Can't a leftist also be pro-war and a Jesus freak?

IDL

[Bonar Law]

This is a classic both/and situation. Growth in the state has a very good chance of increasing the influence of the left. If conservatives help "grow" the government, the chances are that the government will end up doing stuff which (at least by the standards of conservatives-in-opposition) would be deemed leftist.

[c]

I agree with this piece wholeheartedly, but it's missing something. If you're going to define some righties as "anti-left" righties, then you're obligated to define what "left" is. (And it won't do to simply say "the left is those people who want to use the state to solve problems," because then you're talking about the anti-state righties).

I think it's best understood to say that these conservatives are "anti-cultural-left" righties, the cultural left being feminists, african-americans, europhiles, the secular, homosexuals and their sympathizers ... maybe "pacifists" too, if there are any of those left.

[thoreau]

c-

Good point. I would also include on that list certain economic interests (poor people, unions, trial lawyers).

Basically what we've got is two tribes. One tribe has been more blatantly obvious in its love for big government, and for a good portion of the 20th century that tribe ruled the roost and big government almost became their trademark. The other tribe does indeed have some people who truly oppose big government, but it also has a lot of people who mostly just dislike the opposing tribe but have no objection to big government when it suits their own interests.

Now, it may very well be that the other tribe is a lesser evil, but that's sort of missing the point: That lesser evil tribe will only reduce the size of government when the tribe benefits. If your interests strongly overlap with that tribe then you're set. But if your interests only weakly overlap, you're probably screwed. Neither side will significantly reduce the size of government in a manner that significantly advances your interests.

And now Andrew will post a message explaining how naive I am.

[SPD]

The left complains when the right controls the government because Big Oil can plunge its claws into previously-unmolested while the politicos look the other way, and taxpayer-financed bombs will reign over all non-Caucasian nations that look at us cross-eyed. The right complains when the left controls the government because poor people will get money for nothing and giant corporations become subject to the whims of crusading attorneys.

The solution? Abortions for some, miniature American flags for others!

[SPD]

Wow. Several spelling and syntactical boo-boos on my part.

"previously-unmolested NATURAL HABITATS"

"taxpayer-financed bombs will RAIN"

The rest may be logically flawed, but grammatically correct. Thank you for your time!

[c]

When I put together my list of the "cultural" left, I tried to stick to "cultural" categories. "The poor" might be a cultural category, but trial lawyers and unions probably aren't. Anyway, trial lawyers and unions are more the bogey-men of the anti-state righties than the anti-left righties.

What I like about this construction is that it defines righties not by what they support but by what they oppose, which somehow seems more accurate. Libertarians (anti-staters) have always been defined this way, but traditionalists (anti-cultural-lefters) haven't.

[dhex]

"However, their hearts are not in it the same way that leftist's hearts are in it."

how the hell can you possibly measure this?

[Eric the .5b]

how the hell can you possibly measure this?

Probably by actually knowing some right-wingers and some left-wingers. I count members of both as friends, but the left-wingers only ever seem mind uses and expansions of government by the right-wingers. YMMV.

[c]

"Knowing some right-wingers and some left-wingers" is pretty much the definition of "anecdotal evidence," which is the opposite of what dhex was looking for. In Cameron's defense, though, the statement was pretty clearly just his impression, and I don't think he presented it as anything but.

[Pavel]

The right-statist instinct is to fight the future. The left-statist instinct is to credit the politics for the past.

But there's generally agreement on both sides of the spectrum that if you leave things alone, they're going to get more liberal. That's probably why right-libertarians are a dying breed while left-libertarians are a growing silent majority.

[R C Dean]

See, I regard leftism (as opposed to squishy liberalism) as being the politics of the Total State. It is impossible to be a leftist and a libertarian; too many of the core beliefs of the left involve things like redistribution of wealth and various other flavors of state intervention to be compatible with libertarianism.

Leftism is fundamentally the politics of collectivism. Libertariansim is the politics of individualism. While a few ideas or programs may cross over from one to the other, leftists and libertarians are natural enemies.

[TheReincarnationOfPaulRevere's]

--Leftism is fundamentally the politics of collectivism. Libertariansim is the politics of individualism. While a few ideas or programs may cross over from one to the other, leftists and libertarians are natural enemies.

Libertarianism is Anarchism without balls.

[c]

Now we have to define "leftism" as distinct from "liberalism"? You're killing me! Do you really think you can be a "conservative leftist"? C'mon.

You want to define "leftism" as "pro-statism," which pretty much defines out of existence half of the conservatives Yglesias's article discusses. Does this new construction improve our understanding of the people in these schools, or their ideas? No.

[Jason Ligon]

I don't buy this framing of the question, either.

As I've mentioned before, I firmly believe that ideology has almost nothing to do with political parties in a winner take all system. Only two effective platforms for political expression leads to not some unpleasant neighbors here and there in your coalition, but a very random distribution of people in your coalition with whom you agree in general or not.

That said, the coalitions tell a story in an attempt to bring normally unmotivated voters to the polls. These are people who don't feel threatened on their hot button issues. Knowing that gun people will go one way and choice people will go the other every time, the coalitions spin a narrative that is supposed to explain the underlying ideology that unmotivated voters can sympathize with. There is no ideology, there is only post hoc narrative that can be plausibly applied to describe the current coalition members.

The narrative of the left is, and has been for decades, redistribution. The ACLU, or 'anti state', arm of the left coalition is miniscule. The unmotivated voter is given the option of voting for a coaltion that will pay them or a coalition that will not pay them. The story is simple and powerful.

The right coalition's story to the masses is a combination of appeal to tradition and 'leave me alone'. This is, of course, an uneasy story to tell when tradition appears to require not leaving people alone.

The actual liberal left has nothing to do with libertarianism, and we all know that. Fortunately , there aren't very many of them. The people who really push for social conservatism as law are not all that plentiful, either. Therefore, the narrative spun by each coalition to attract unmotivated voters becomes the dominant feature of the coalition even though it started as a marketing campaign.

What is really being discussed is the question of: With which broad coalition should libertarians be involved?

Once we note that the actual left and the actual right are not the driving forces behind electoral success, the question changes slightly to "Should we be allied with people who are primarily motivated by redistribution to themselves, or should we be allied with people who are motivated by some combination of 'leave me alone' and preference for tradition?

My $.02 is that some tradition is horrible, but in the US we are blessed with having quite a few classical liberal traditions as well. To the extent that traditions are horrible, it is very unlikely that these can be converted into law. Leave me alone is always good. Redistribution is an anathema, and has the additional quality of very broad appeal and consequently high probability of becoming law. For me, my hot button of the right of self defense is in the right coalition, and even when I don't feel threatened on that issue, I wind up in the right coalition for the above reasons. I would expect that similarly valued people would wind up making similar decisions UNLESS their hot button is in the left coalition.

[c]

"Leave me alone" is not a sufficiently specific moral foundation. No matter what the government does, people are going to spend their time and energy trying to figure out how to not leave each other alone. In fact, most of the basic ideas prompting lefty solutions have been based one person's perception that he wasn't being left alone. (Blacks didn't feel like they were being "left alone" when they were kicked out of restaurants. People don't feel like they're being "left alone" when they're robbed at gunpoint. Consumers don't feel like they're being "left alone" when corporations try constantly to sell them stuff that kills them.)

[fyodor]

If you're going to define some righties as "anti-left" righties, then you're obligated to define what "left" is.

Not necessarily, if you have a fluid view of the phenomenon and consider that both right and left are ruled primarily by the dictum, "Whatever THEY are for, I'm against!"

As for this talk of the Total State, many if not most leftists want the State to operate only in certain areas, just as rightists do. Seems both sides want the State to have potentially Total power, but disagree primarily in where are the wise uses of that power, ie what coercion will make things bettter for all of us. Both POV's give the State Total power to operate in whatever area they deem worthy of State power. Both sides use arguments of freedom and liberty for restricting the State's power from areas where they don't see its use as wise or beneficial.

[Jason Ligon]

c:

I don't disagree. In fact, my whole point is that emphasis on consistent ideology is misplaced. The narratives are stupid and inconsistent, but it is the narratives and not the ideologies that drive electoral success.

[Andrew]

Heard an antique joke the other day: What did one wall say to the other wall? Meet you at the corner!

Libertarianism and conservatism do meet at the corner, while remaining distinct.

No conservative who thinks about it believes the world will be entirely save from the depredations of the Left, so long as government is large enough to represent a convenient vehicle, and tempting target, for the Left to hijack, and deploy for all sorts of brother-loving and cultural-engineering crusades...

...and no conservative - even the most flat-Earth Christian - cares very much if some communitarians take their families to a free-love kibbutz in Idaho, so long as they don't enlist the rest of society into their ethos.

And the right-wing agenda of prohibitions and conscriptions - no matter how fancifully the paranoid imagination embellishes it - couldn't BEGIN to match the workaday agenda of ANY self-described Leftist.

So? Both conservatives and libertarians would probably feel supremely comfortable in a minimalist state...and perhaps they could still argue about prohibitions on drugs and sodomy - but I suspect a culture comfortable without minimum-wage laws, would afford little traction for the prohibitionists.

But that is a utopian project - at least in this generation - and mean-time anyone into political praxis needs to identify battles worth fighting. You enter the realm of trade-offs.

Two walls may meet at the corner...but any distance from the corner, and the two walls may be for apart.

[Stevo Darkly]

I think:

- Left-liberals want to use the power of the State to make people as good as they could be.

- Conservatives want to use the power of the State to make people as good as they used to be.

[fyodor]

Another way to look at this is that all but the most extreme of both leftists and rightists agree with libertarians that government should be restricted to preventing harm, only we all disagree on what behaviors constitute doing harm and therefore what behaviors are actionable by state power. Both the left and the right obviously have much more fluid ideas of that. And that's why I'm not going to back down from saying that whatever the merits of forcible democracitization may be, it's not consistent with libertarianism (sorry, had to do it), because once you start down that road, there's really no difference between libertarianism and EITHER (most of) the right or the left, both of whom just see the need to prevent harm wherever their pet theories take them.

[thoreau]

For the sake of argument, let's say that the left really is the ultimate repository of evil.

In that case, the divide could be described as one between Frodo and Boromir. Boromir wants ultimate power so he can fight the bad guys. Frodo wants to destroy the Ring so that nobody can wield ultimate power over anybody else.

Of course, the interesting lesson is that even Frodo is seduced in the end, and the world is only saved because a long time ago a hobbit showed pitty on a wretched creature who had been enslaved by the Ring.

Maybe some day there will be an LP President, but instead of down-sizing the government he'll decide to use it for his own ends. But he'll be forced to do the right thing when, say, a welfare basket case (somebody who has been utterly corrupted by the state) accidentally shreds the Executive Order calling for the internment of all Democrats and Republicans.

Or maybe I've read LotR one too many times...

[Lowdog]

thoreau - that rocked! 🙂 Bravo!

[Andrew]

"destroy the ring forever"

But why suppose that government, episodically made smaller, won't grow back again?

What ideologies grow government?

Traditionalism? Probably not since the 1930's, since that kind of traditionalism has little foot-hold in the popular culture of affluent civilisations (in the Third World, it's another matter).

Progessivism - the belief that progress can, and needs to, be delivered by the state - is obviously a FAR more potent source of run-away government in modern societies.

Modern cultures BELIEVE in progress - believe that progress is possible, and that the pursuit if progress is worthwhile and prudent. The world bin-Ladin comes from is skeptical of progress - doesn't expect much of it, and suspects that the pursuit of it is unhealthy.

Conservatives in modern societies, broadly accept the modern culture's belief in progress, with only a few caveats...including the one held by libertarians - that government has little to do with it.

[c]

...and no conservative - even the most flat-Earth Christian - cares very much if some communitarians take their families to a free-love kibbutz in Idaho, so long as they don't enlist the rest of society into their ethos.

Yeah, so long as it's in Idaho... But how do you think conservatives would feel if these communitarians simply ran for public office in some already existing little berg? Let's say they win office, fair-and-square. Let's say they pass whatever free-love policies they would have had in their little Idahoan kibbutz, with the consent of the townsfolk. Would conservatives, or even libertarians, be ok with that?

[Jason Ligon]

There is a teeny fraction of the population that holds to a conservative, liberal, or libertaian ideology. There is a larger group of the population that value specific issues that are obviously conservative, liberal, or libertarian. The great majority of people are interested in the most compelling story. The story may appeal to gut instincts about how society is supposed to look, as in vague appeals to unfair wealth distributions or vague appeals to traditional values. It is a story designed to create a sense of Us vs. Them.

Those who are legitimately ideological in their approach, as libertarians are famous for being, must contend with the sad truth that the great majority are not motivated by ideology but by issues and vague feelings of identity. We in the libertarian camp understand that we must contend with this problem as we have always struggled for relevance, but it seems to me that discussions like these carry an underlying misperception that most people are either ideologically conservative or liberal. We aren't allying ourselves with those guys in particular, we are most significantly allying ourselves with the completely non ideological constituents of their coalitions.

[c]

Jason, I can't help but feel like we've had this conversation before. Last time it ended because we either agreed, or disagreed in such a way as to make it pointless to continue.

What you're really close to asserting is that ideological nametags (all besides "libertarian" of course) have no meaning aside from from their opposition to each other. The only definition for "conservative" is "anti-liberal" and vice versa.

Since this is a semantic problem, I can't so much prove you wrong as appeal to common understanding. Is that the way those words are really used? Lots of people use these words, can they all simply be trying to tell us who they dislike?

[thoreau]

Jason, in regard to your first post in this thread:
I don't buy this framing of the question, either.

As I've mentioned before, I firmly believe that ideology has almost nothing to do with political parties in a winner take all system. Only two effective platforms for political expression leads to not some unpleasant neighbors here and there in your coalition, but a very random distribution of people in your coalition with whom you agree in general or not.

Actually, I think that the framing of "anti-left" vs. "anti-state" is compatible with your notion that the coalition is what matters, and the ideology is a narrative that we invent to rationalize the coalition.

Most people in the conservative/right/whatever coalition are motivated by some mixture of tribal loyalty and single-issues (or a handful of issues). That's basically an anti-left sentiment: The left isn't part of their tribe, and the left coalition disagrees with them on their key issue or issues. The fact that their disagreement with the left is non-ideological doesn't change the fact that their affiliation with the right is based on opposition to the left first and foremost.

Of course, there are a handful of people in the conservative/right/whatever coalition who are ideologically anti-state, but they're a tiny minority. They would be called "anti-state conservatives" and the rest would be called "anti-left conservatives."

[Jason Ligon]

"What you're really close to asserting is that ideological nametags (all besides "libertarian" of course) have no meaning aside from from their opposition to each other. The only definition for "conservative" is "anti-liberal" and vice versa."

I felt the need to try again because I didn't feel like I was communicating the thought very well, and this comment indicates that is the case. I am not saying that liberals and conservatives don't exist or that the labels are meaningless. I am saying that very few people actually ARE liberals or conservatives (or libertarians). We tend to incorrectly apply the philosophical label to members of the same voting coalition. I am suggesting that it is inappropriate to indicate that because person A is in the same voting coalition as GW Bush, we can derive anything meaning about their motivations. Similarly, an indictment of conservatives has almost no bearing on the vast marjority of people in the same voting coalition as conservatives.

If we spend all of our time wondering whether conservatives or liberals are closer to our own ideology, we are missing the big picture that it doesn't matter at all. What matters is whether we are more similar to the 90% of non ideological voters in each coalition. The important question is something like, "Can libertarians side with the AARP?"

[SPD]

"I like the libertarian view, which is to leave everyone alone. Even as a kid, I was annoyed by people who wanted to tell everyone how to live."
--Clint Eastwood

That's good enough for me.

[dhex]

"...and no conservative - even the most flat-Earth Christian - cares very much if some communitarians take their families to a free-love kibbutz in Idaho, so long as they don't enlist the rest of society into their ethos."

if you say so. i can think of a number of counterexamples, like most every anti-consensual sex law ever.

[Jason Ligon]

"Most people in the conservative/right/whatever coalition are motivated by some mixture of tribal loyalty and single-issues (or a handful of issues). That's basically an anti-left sentiment: The left isn't part of their tribe, and the left coalition disagrees with them on their key issue or issues. The fact that their disagreement with the left is non-ideological doesn't change the fact that their affiliation with the right is based on opposition to the left first and foremost."

Thoreau: I see what you are getting at here, and note that an identical analysis applies to the left coalition. My concern is that libertarians seem not to appreciate the implications. To me, the implication is that getting all bent out of shape about what actual liberals and conservatives are doing is not only pointless in the sense of being futile, it is strategically pointless as well. What we need to be paying attention to is the narratives that are successful in motivating non ideological voters to side with a given coalition, and we especially need to note that the narratives are not really related to coherent ideologies.

[c]

ahhh, well I didn't realize we were talking strategically. FWIW, we're going to have to resign ourselves to the fact that there are very few people who are happy to follow an ideology wherever it leads, and far more people who are interested in ideologizing whatever practical outcome they'd prefer to see. Libertarianism, which is a potent rationale for blunting the other guy's power, is always going to be cited by underdogs.

Disappointingly, I think libertarianism's best bet is to continue doing exactly what it's doing now. Harangue those politicians you can catch espousing your philosophy as a matter of convenience, continue to emphasize libertarianism's best aspect - its elegant simplicity. Fact is, a polotical philosophy based in limiting the power of government is not going to field candidates naturally good at getting into and holding onto positions of power in government.

[kwais]

Comment by: Andrew at February 25, 2005 02:59 PM

Well said dude.

[SixSigma]

My concern is that libertarians seem not to appreciate the implications. To me, the implication is that getting all bent out of shape about what actual liberals and conservatives are doing is not only pointless in the sense of being futile, it is strategically pointless as well.

I watched a speech shortly after the last election by the raging cajun, James Carville, and he made the same argument about the current parties. The conservatives have a better story than the Democrats and hence their loss.

While I don't wish to debate the merrits of the election thought process above, I do argree that narratives are used very effectively and you only ignore the obvious at your peril. One of the reasons why big government programs such as perscription drug coverage sell so easily, is the narrative of a poor old grandmother finally being able to afford the drugs she needs is much more powerful than the a description of a future too large and all too powerful government controlling our lives.

And like any business or movement, searching for a goal, we should play by the rules of the game if we expect to get a return.

[kwais]

I generally dislike the when the government tries to regulate buisness, because I feel like the government is trying to control my choices as a consumer.

But I hate it when buisness tries to do it also.

I hate it when the DVD doesn't let you fast forward.

I hate it when the car makes an annoying sound that won't stop when you don't want to wear your seatbelt.

Or when you cant turn of the headlights.

So I wonder can you be a libertarian against the invasiveness of big government, and against the invasiveness of a big corporation also?

That might be a bogus question, because the corporate decisions might be a result of government regulations.

[kwais]

C
You said:

"But how do you think conservatives would feel if these communitarians simply ran for public office in some already existing little berg? Let's say they win office, fair-and-square. Let's say they pass whatever free-love policies they would have had in their little Idahoan kibbutz, with the consent of the townsfolk. Would conservatives, or even libertarians, be ok with that?"

I think that conservatives would be fine with it. As long as they didn't use everyones taxes to fund their love festivals.

As a matter of fact the conservatives could do like the Saudi's and have their prudish religious land, and then go take a wife swapping vacation over to that town in Idaho. As long as the guys in the free love town didn't confiscate your gun on the way in.

Then when said conservatives got back they could say how much they dissaprove of that lifestyle, and that they only went there for the skiing, or what have you.

[Bakunin]

I agree with the horse guy from 2:18.

"Nothing is more dangerous for man's private morality than the habit of command. The best man, the most intelligent, disinterested, generous, pure, will infallibly and always be spoiled at this trade. Two sentiments inherent in power never fail to produce this demoralisation; they are: contempt for the masses and the overestimation of one's own merits."

Yours,

Mikhail

[thoreau]

To me, the implication is that getting all bent out of shape about what actual liberals and conservatives are doing is not only pointless in the sense of being futile, it is strategically pointless as well. What we need to be paying attention to is the narratives that are successful in motivating non ideological voters to side with a given coalition, and we especially need to note that the narratives are not really related to coherent ideologies.

Let me see if I understand you:

1) There's no point in castigating Republican elected officials for straying from the ideology (e.g. prescription drug bill) because the ideology is just a convenient narrative that's spun to rationalize the coalition.

If that's your point, you're basically saying that big-spending Republicans aren't betraying anything because they were never loyal to or pledged to fiscal conservatism in the first place.

I see the point, but at the very least they're still hypocrites: They complain about big government and waste, and then they perpetrate it. Pointing out hypocrisy as such may or may not be a good way to win elections (hypocrisy seems to be more effective as an accusation if coupled with a cover-up of some sort, or at least if the hypocrite was being really preachy about people's personal lives).

However, re-packaging hypocrisy as a "flip flop" seems to be somewhat effective. I have no illusion that the "flip-flopper" charge single-handedly brought down Kerry, but in the minds of some swing voters it helped to sow the seeds of doubt, or at least it distracted them from whatever message Kerry wanted to send. My statistically insignificant but illustrative anecdote is my cousin who lives in Michigan (a swing voter in a swing state). He cited "flip-flopping" as a key reason for not supporting Kerry.

Of course, the Dems are ill-positioned to charge the GOP with "flip-flopping" on spending. But an LP candidate running as a spoiler might be better-positioned to portray the GOP as a bunch of hypocrites on the size of gov't.

2) You're saying that the importance of the narrative is how well it packages the coalition for swing voters, rather than how accurately it describes the philosophical loyalties of the coalition members.

Fair enough. Whether libertarians are going to run for office as Republicans, Libertarians, or even maverick Democrats, they need to come up with a narrative rather than a technocratic description of the ways that smaller gov't will improve the world. Nobody wants to hear a libertarian economist drone on about "And we could cover a 10% cut in this tax by ending the subsidies that on average drive up the cost of groceries by 12.7%, as detailed in the latest Cato Policy Journal., as well as a 59.3% reduction in the amount of unused land owned by the DoD..."

[Armchair Analyst]

My screwball analysis:

There are at least 3 different -isms at play in the American culture. One is libertarianism, wherein the person desires the ability to do as he pleases. Even the most Orwellian of individuals allows *some* freedom, if nothing more than which leg is first when putting on pants. Most of us, of course, have very strong libertarian impulses.

The second -ism is egalitarianism. This is especially dominant in "leftists". But even they allow *some* inequalities, or else they'd do a "Logan's Run" automatic death, to make sure no one lived longer than anyone else. Note that a certain level of egalitarianism is present in most libertarians. We want to be equal before the law, for example. We want equality of opportunity, if not equality of results. Also note that most egalitarians are focused on economics; on other issues they exhibit strong libertarian tendencies.

The third -ism is conformitarianism. This is the biggest issue with many on the "right". They want you to think and act and pray (or is it that prey?) just like they do. Any deviation from the groupthink is call for legislation. Note that libertarians and egalitarians have conformitarian streaks too. We often pile on the guy who espouses some sort of heresy, or defend the imposition of liberal democracy (be like me!) on Iraq. The egalitarians have their own conformity issues, especially when making burnt offerings to "diversity" and "tolerance". Ironic, no? Likewise, you can identify egalitarian and libertarian behaviors among the conformitarians. They don't care so much about *how* you do something as *what* you do. For example, in sex, as long as it gets her pregnant, its OK. But if it doesn't, stop doing that. Gay sex doesn't get anyone pregnant, so it's out. So is hetero anal and oral. But hetero doggy style? No problem!

[Ruthless]

Forgive me as it is almost my bedtime, but snore city is my comment.
Parsing reminds me I'm looking for some good espresso coffee beans to grind extra fine.
The birth father of our daughter gave us an espresso-maker which we have yet to remove from its boxing and wrapping.

[Gary Gunnels]

thoreau,

The other day I was listening to a "conservative" on NPR complaing about the "liberal" attitude towards government handouts re: science. Her attitude wasn't about killing the funding but about her groups "legitimate" piece of the pie. Honestly, I think that's what it means to be conservative these days; making sure you get enough government funding for your conservative study, program, etc.

Andrew,

Conservatives have no problem with a gargantuan state. You are living in a fantasy-land if you think that conservatives are into a minimalist state. They were only into such when they were out of power; now that they are in power, they've chucked that particular portion of their agenda. If anyway is being naive here, its you.

kwais,

No, naively said.

_______________________________________

Basically libertarians and conservatives have a desire for lower taxes in common. That is about it. Why people like kwais and Andrew see this particular nexus as something to celebrate I can't say since libertarians and liberals have about the amount of minimal things in common.

[thoreau]

Gary-

What kind of research did this person want more money for? "Intelligent design?" Studies "proving" that homosexuality is a choice? (Don't tell the guy in Maine.)

[kwais]

GG

"No, naively said."

Huh? I am naive? How so?

[John]

I don't know any liberals who are libertarians. They might libertines in that they are not puritanical leftists who feel guilty about smoking pot or getting laid, but they are not libertians. The reason for this is that they could not care less about the rights of people they don't like or culturally disapprove. If you are a libertarian you care about the rights of Christian fundementalist wack jobs down the street to practice their religion and be left alone by the government even though you would never be one or approve of being one yourself. If you are a libertine, you don't care, in fact you probably want, the government to come and lock them up as social devients as long as you can have your internet porn and smoke your pot without any hassel from the government. Every liberal I have ever met, who wasn't a puritanical Kathrine McKinnen type fit into the latter catagory not the former. Unfortuneatly, all too many people who claim to be libertarians are really just libertines.