"Personally I’m not interested in “limited government” as an end in itself, but as a means to greater individual liberty. I’m opposed to government programs that waste taxpayer dollars because higher taxes restrict my freedom. But I’m much more opposed to government programs that use taxpayer dollars to restrict freedom directly. I’m not interested in joining a “limited government” movement that considers the two equivalent. And I’m definitely not interested in being part of a movement that gives torture and preemptive war a free pass under the heading of “national defense” while it focuses instead on fighting the tyranny of SCHIP and unemployment insurance," -Timothy B. Lee, Bottom-Up.
I completely agree with this sentiment. It seems to me that there's a real disconnect between those on the political right who call themselves conservatives and even claim to endorse the philosophy of libertarianism and their simultaneous enthusiastic embrace of the military and security culture of our government. Yes, rising taxes and government waste are problems that I believe we need to address but I hardly find those issues as insidious as our government's relatively recent proclaimed power to tap your phone and read your email without warrants, kick in your front door and ransack your home, lock you away without charging you with a crime or reading you your rights and yes, torturing you to within and even beyond an inch of your life.
I too care about how my tax dollars are spent but I care even more about my personal bodily liberty and civil rights and it appears that those aforementioned "conservatives" are quite happy to cede what I consider to be more than a few personal rights and freedoms in exchange for their nanny state government claiming to protect them from every conceivable danger in the world, even from themselves. To me this world outlook smacks of fear, which would definitely explain the desperate bouts of bravado and jingoism these people so often go through to compenate for it. While on principle I agree with them on several issues of fiscal responsibility their hypocrisy as it pertains to personal liberties unfortunately prevents me from taking them seriously on most other issues.
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Monday, August 30, 2010
Something Someone Else Said
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5 comments:
If only their fiscal responsibility extended to the trillion dollar plus defense budget which is larded up with items designed to fight the Soviets or the Japanese Imperial Army or the Nazis, anyone besides the guerrilla fighters the US serviceman is likely to face.
In case you didn't catch it, check out the title of this Tbogg post. One of my favorite books, too.
If I didn't know any better ex DLB I would have thought that he was making fun of me with the KFC reference adjoining the sub-header from my site. I think Beck deserves ridiculing slightly more than I do though.
I'd like a new tag added to your blog posts: "People I don't take seriously". You could add it everytime you make the statement - or some version thereof - that you can't take X people seriously. Admittedly, X might stand for only 1 group of people, but I'd like to see how many of your posts include that comment.
I'm betting it's quite a few.
I wouldn't doubt it, one L. If the media and others didn't take these people seriously either I probably wouldn't write about them at all.
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