SCENE: Mitch BERG is picking out a cordless drill at Menard’s. Egbert FLEGEL, Chairmain of Liberty Uber Alles Minnesota, almost literally bumps into BERG.
FLEGEL: Hey, Merg.
BERG: Hey, Egbert. What’s new?
FLEGEL: Oh, we’re just carrying on the fight for liberty. We’re about to put together the Liberty Uber Alles 2015 scorecard on the Minnesota Legislature.
BERG: Ah. So what issues does the scorecard focus on?
FLEGEL: Well, the Minnesota GOP got in the way of restoration of felon rights, marijuana legalization, raw milk legalization, they didn’t fight hard enough against photo license readers, they stood in the way of marjuana legalization, they dropped the ball on data deletion, they didn’t work hard enough to kill the “Kingfisher” cell-phone-eavesdropping system, they didn’t fight hard enough for Constitutional Carry, they didn’t do enough to atone for opposing gay marriage, they didn’t work for marijuana legalization, they’re still pro-life, they allowed the DFL Senate and Governor to increase the budget, they didn’t decriminalize Marijuana, they failed to legalize gambling, they failed to roll back the taxpayer subsidies of stadiums, they didn’t roll back property forfeiture, and they didn’t legalize marijuana.
BERG: Huh. Not very liberty-friendly.
FLEGEL: Nope!
BERG: How about the DFL?
FLEGEL: The who?
And SCENE.
Reminds me a radical Libertarian neighbor who refused to vote for Walker in the recall because he wasn’t “anti-union enough.” Uh, excuse me? A Walker replacement would have been better?
Do you want to run into hell or just walk into is?
Nature abhors libertarianism.
If the government adopted libertarian principles, and some enterprising libertarian capitalist took advantage of the opportunity and opened a combo porn store/drug emporium next to an elementary school, it would burn down. Perhaps there would be a courtesy call before hand to allow the occupants to evacuate, but it would burn. There would be nothing that could be done to stop it from burning.
People will run amok unless government is on them every minute.
DMA, your statement is ridiculous. Who in all the world believes that “People will run amok unless government is on them every minute”?
Not every person will run amok.
Some will. The response to that is what separates a libertarian from a conservative (or a liberal, I guess).
The point of the post, of course, is that most of Minnesota’s current “liberarian movement” seems to be focused on attacking (or vandalizing) the GOP.
“…most of Minnesota’s current “liberarian movement” seems to be focused on attacking (or vandalizing) the GOP”
– which of course is both silly and counterproductive. On the other hand, Libertarians have even less to gain from attacking the DFL, which is, by definition, an organization inimical to any and all forms of liberty.
I like libertarian ideas in concept; but I’m viewing them from inside the context of an already-ordered society. People here generally behave well but it’s impossible to prove whether that’s because they behave well by nature, because of the moderating influence of religion or because they fear the policeman around the corner.
I don’t think humans can understand a system from within the system. You must leave Minnesota and live elsewhere to understand how weird Minnesota is (examples: my son is stationed in North Carolina where they sell beer and wine in grocery stories and Wal-Mart has an open rack of AR-15’s that any customer can pick up and handle). It’s an uncertainty principle, or an observer effect, or something; but it’s the same problem with scientists trying to explain the creation of the universe – can’t be done from within the system and we haven’t figured out how to get out of this universe to look at it from the outside – a true God’s Eye View.
What I see in places where there is no functioning government (Somolia, Detroit) is vindication of Hobbe’s “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short” critique. Of course, Hobbes is equally vindicated in places with too much government (North Korea, North Minneapolis). So I’m skeptical that implementing libertarian ideas will work as well as big-L libertarians seem to think.
After you tear down the social structure to test out your libertarian ideas, what if it turns out the social structures was all that kept the warlords at bay? What if Gaddafi was the weight on the lid holding down ISIS and by deposing him, you let the lid blow off? Will Libya become a libertarian utopia or a Hobbesian nightmare?
We’re only now seeing the societal ramifications of the 1965 Immigration Reform Act, the Great Welfare Entitlement Society and No-Fault Divorce. We’ll have to wait a bit to find out what a gay-married-gender-fluid society looks like. I don’t know how many more of the building blocks of social order we should yank out just now.
Young Mitch Berg wanted to go to Texas. He was sitting on a bus labeled Dallas but it was broken down, sitting on the shoulder of I35.
So he flagged down another bus and jumped on. Course it was headed north at 10 mph. He consoles himself – I guess Duluth isn’t so bad after all.
He sits in a window seat screaming at the other buses going north at 100 mph.
WE’RE ON THE HIGH-WAY TA HELL
Hat tip to those who point out that libertarianism works in an already ordered society. Personally, I’ve got my doubts about whether any form of republic can avoid becoming a totalitarian state absent Judeo-Christian morality being held by a strong majority.
It would take a mighty powerful State to keep the majority from taking the wealth of the few rich people.
You guys are looking at this the wrong way.
We simply have too much centralized government and too much capital being allocated politically. Then throw in a Fed that “helps” the economy instead of simply backing up the banks. We need an Austrian structure to the economy more than legalized dope and free love or whatever.
The whole system is set up to effectively steal opportunity and purchasing power form individuals so they just give up and join the system in one way or another. The problem is everything will just get worse and worse and the state will have to control us even more. Then it all collapses.
“…libertarianism works in an already ordered society.”
That’s exactly what we had before 1907 / 1914 or whatever. It does us no good to misinterpret that period.
Read Kevin Williamson’s book. We are on the path to doom, waste, graft, and oppression.