[quote]pushharder wrote:
Oh, I read it clearly. What I instantly noticed, however, was that you (as usual) attacked libertarianism, generally. [/quote]
But that wasn’t the issue - my point was to deal with the Founders’ view on government generally. Take a Ritalin.
Nope - the question is “is the idea and institution of government a good in and of itself?” And the answer is yes, and the Founders thought so, too.
The same goes for the idea and institution of family - no doubt that a “family” is only as good as the people in them and their commitment to the idea of “family”. But is the institution of “family” a good in and of itself?
Yes. Same thing. Government is not a morally ambivalent tool any more than the family is.
Predictably, you resort to banalities that everyone already knows. The issue was (and is) the Framer’s view on government generally. That includes state government. Jefferson was not morally ambivalent about the power of government as a good thing - read anything he wrote on public education.
Your attempted diversion into yet another “yeah, but Jefferson didn’t want the ferrul gummint to do…blah blah blah” isn’t relevant to the point. We were talking about the institution of government generally - the idea that government at any level is a good in and of itself.
No boundaries, but also no legitimacy. He was sovereign when the people weren’t. That kind of government was perceived as illegitimate.
The foundation of the New Deal was to try and provide national solutions to the dislocation caused by industrialism and the urbanization of America; it was not caused by social libertarianism.
But I don’t believe that the rise of social insurance is the equivalent of the welfare state - the welfare state came after the arise of the social insurance programs of the New Deal.
Well, no, it was contemporaneous with it, and was expanded as the effects of the 1960s continued to be felt (under future administrations, like Nixon’s). Johnson’s War on Poverty was a reaction (in part)to the continued deterioration of inner cities and urban areas, which were being decimated by the decline of traditional norms.
The Moynihan Report - which detailed the demise of black families and communities in particular, but was emblematic of the culture at large - was issued in 1965 and recognized the problem (and called for action).
Whether you agree with the action taken is not relevant for the point made - the point is the demise of traditional institutions in the name of “liberation” from the old, antiquated restraints on an individual’s desire to do what he/she wants to do was a driving force of these problems.
Libertarians “mention” personal responsibility, but “mentioning” doesn’t cause it to happen. Humans don’t behave along such utopian lines.
And society needed it to grow to step into the roles formerly held by families, churches, communities, etc. - those antiquated institutions that libertarians insisted (and continue to insist) that individuals need to be “liberated” from so they can go do what they feel without restraint or moral opprobrium or legal sanction.
Libertarians don’t get this, and probably never will - social libertarianism is the handmaiden of the welfare state.
Doesn’t matter if libertarians “demand” it - it doesn’t happen, and the rest of society has to pick up the pieces from the experiment when it doesn’t happen. Period. Example: men having sex with any woman they want, fathering children out of wedlock? “I am free to not be contrained by monogamy, I want to do it, and no one should tell me I can’t!”. Hey, they should have taken personal responsibility. But hey, guess what, they didn’t, and now we have legions of fatherless children and non-existent families in urban areas. Guess what? Government has step in and be the family that has been discredited.
Just one example. But a good one.
Well, I’ll be clear - let me do you a favor and let you know firsthand that your conclusion drawn is a wrong one. As such, you’d do well to stop putting on The Act - if you knew half of what you thought you did about me, you’d realize you’d have egg on your face.
That isn’t the point, and now I realize the problem - you don’t know what the point was then, or now. I explained it then - radical left-wingers don’t care how their policy gets enacted - only that it gets enacted. They don’t care about process or the rightful checks and balances in our system. A judge can invent some heretofore never heard of theory about the 9th Amendment creating some new right overturning the work of a duly elected Congress, and left-wingers would be ok with that, because the end justifies the means.
That’s you, too.