Iowa, Minnesota, Louisiana, Maine, and Nevada

[RoyGBiv]

Morality is not "great"; Morality is NECESSARY for a democratic society.

And some forms of morality must be promoted by and/or enforced by government, such as do not murder the innocent, do not steal, etc.

And yeah my love of God impedes a lot on my freedom. God requires certain behaviours that impede my freedom - love neighbors - I need to forgive even when I don't want to ; do not steal; deal honestly with others; be faithful to my wife; protect the innocent, etc.

If we want to keep a democracy of any kind, freedom can not be your only principle.

I'll agree that *some* forms of morality must be in place, and you cite perfect examples. My argument, which I should have been more specific about, is the far reaching morality arguments. Without breaking forum rules, I won't mention what it is...but we can figure them out.

And your love of a god is fine. What I have a problem with is when elected officials think I need to follow the rules their god puts in place. I don't subscribe to any form of religion personally, and I wouldn't force that upon anyone else. I would like to see that go as a two way street.

There's far too much overreach by the government.

It saddens me to see this kind of infighting. Looks to me like we're splitting different hairs.

I never could understand why religious conservatives feel any need to codify their beliefs into law or social practice, and I never could understand why non-religious conservatives seem so worried about the words coming from their right rather than the laws being passed. I hate to use another Reagan reference as it's almost cliche to do so.. but.. here was a very religious man, driven by his faith and his personal beliefs in God and the Bible, who, as far as I remember (my mind is slowly slipping, ) never passed a law that would impinge upon or promote over the other either groups rights or their ability to live life as they choose.

You can be a religious conservative and serve ALL the people just as well as you can be a social centrist and serve ALL the people. You can accomplish this by allowing all of them to live their own lives as they deem appropriate. The FACT is that if we don't get Obama ejected from office, this country will have a very dim ECONOMIC future.

[anygunanywhere]

How does "love of God" impede on your freedom?

I see nothing wrong with the Libertarians number one priority being freedom. Freedom for you to practice your religion, freedom for me to not. But when laws are drafted / written based on someones religious beliefs, I have a huge problem with that.

Morality is great. Forced / Governed morality is not.

Morality comes from God as does all truth.

Anygunanywhere

[fickman]

pro-abortion; no drug laws;

*Disclaimer: I am NOT a Ron Paul supporter!

To be fair, he is against abortion. He believes abortion and drugs are state issues. For drugs especially, it makes sense (and seems more in line with the Constitution). We rely states to write and enforce penal codes for rape, assault, murder, theft, robbery, and other crimes. . .

I know he agrees with that, but he won't clarify it. He is trying to stay on the philosophical level and preach libertarianism as an idea. His son, Rand, is a much better communicator of the "what would that look like" details. I don't think Ron has real intentions of winning the Presidency, he wants to lead a movement, shift the debate, and pave the road for the next generation of leaders to adopt libertarian ideas.

[EconDoc]

While I like Ron Paul on some domestic issues, he would be as bad a foreign policy disaster as Neville Chamberlain was for the British in 1938. Pulling our troops out of trouble areas in the world will not cause them to suddenly love us. There are people who hate us just because we do not follow their version of their religion, and those people feel that they have a duty to their god to impose that religion on the whole world even if it means flying airliners into buildings and killing 3000 people. They are not merely terrorists; they are full-fledged revolutionaries. I do not believe that Ron Paul realizes that.

While I am more sympathetic to libertarian principles that many conservatives, there is a need for government intervention in some areas such as antitrust, for one example. The difference is that some people take a pragmatic view of libertarian principles, others, like Ron Paul, are ideologues. Beware of the utopian idealist ideologue. They will either become totalitarian (like many on the left and the far right) or, in Ron Paul's case, go too far to the other extreme.

I do disagree with Charles about one thing: the so-called War on Drugs has been every bit as successful as Prohibition was in the 1920's. For 40 years, we have done the same things over and over, always expecting the next tightening of the law to have a different outcome than the last gazillion times that we have tightened it. Legalize at least some drugs and tax them, but make being under the influence of drugs or alcohol an aggravating circumstance for any crime committed while under that influence--perhaps, a bounce of one level, e.g. a Class III Felony becomes Class II if committed while under the influence.

I don't like Romney, but a vote for Ron Paul, or any third-party candidate, is a vote for four more years of Obama.

[The Mad Moderate]

How does "love of God" impede on your freedom?

I see nothing wrong with the Libertarians number one priority being freedom. Freedom for you to practice your religion, freedom for me to not. But when laws are drafted / written based on someones religious beliefs, I have a huge problem with that.

Morality is great. Forced / Governed morality is not.

Morality comes from God as does all truth.

Anygunanywhere

So I guess that makes me an immoral liar.
It's things like that which make people like me cringe, if you need a god to tell you not to kill, rape or steal you have some very serious problems.

[pbwalker]

How does "love of God" impede on your freedom?

I see nothing wrong with the Libertarians number one priority being freedom. Freedom for you to practice your religion, freedom for me to not. But when laws are drafted / written based on someones religious beliefs, I have a huge problem with that.

Morality is great. Forced / Governed morality is not.

Morality comes from God as does all truth.

Anygunanywhere

I wholeheartedly disagree

[gdanaher]

Morality exists when there is a fear of the consequences for the lack of morality.

[pbwalker]

pro-abortion

Pro-Choice ≠ Pro-Abortion

I personally think it's disgusting and I am very anti-abortion. But it is not MY place, nor the GOVERNMENT'S place to say so.

[jmra]

So many things I could say in this thread but I will limit it to this:
Ron Paul is a political joke, he has always been a political joke and he will always be a political joke.

Edited to remove comments I might regret later.

[anygunanywhere]

pro-abortion

Pro-Choice ≠ Pro-Abortion

I personally think it's disgusting and I am very anti-abortion. But it is not MY place, nor the GOVERNMENT'S place to say so.

It is very much our place and the government's place to say that abortion is wrong. The innocent cannot defend themselves. If we nor the government do not defend the unborn and innocent, who will?

Anygunanywhere

[anygunanywhere]

How does "love of God" impede on your freedom?

I see nothing wrong with the Libertarians number one priority being freedom. Freedom for you to practice your religion, freedom for me to not. But when laws are drafted / written based on someones religious beliefs, I have a huge problem with that.

Morality is great. Forced / Governed morality is not.

Morality comes from God as does all truth.

Anygunanywhere

I wholeheartedly disagree

That is what your free will allows you to do. Believing in the truth is your decision to make. You will never be forced to do what you do not want to do nor believe what you do not want to believe.

We decide our ultimate fate. Free will.

Anygunanywhere

[The Annoyed Man]

Morality is great. Forced / Governed morality is not.

So you would be in favor of repealing laws that prohibit murder, rape, kidnapping, and pederasty? Those are all laws founded in morality, LONG before libertarianism was invented. Your statement could easily be rephrased, "I am against murder, rape, kidnapping, and pederasty from a moral perspective, but I don't think government has any place in passing or enforcing laws against them."

This is the problem when people state that you can't legislate morality. Of course you can, and people have been doing it for thousands of years, and generally for the betterment of society and the culture. In fact, there is nothing "immoral" about legislating morality. The ultimate Libertarian expression is utopian in nature, and like all utopian ideals, it fails to account for basic human nature. It assumes that all people will listen to the better angels of their nature. Unfortunately, most don't. When they don't listen to those angels, how can they even have a trial by a jury of their peers when most people don't want to have anything to do with jury duty? You do that by passing laws that constrain the freedoms of The People, forcing them to participate in jury duty. Doesn't that violate the fundamental tenets of Libertarianism......government forcing a citizen to do something they don't want to do? And yet, Amendment 6 to the Constitution guarantees "In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence." How can pure Libertarianism reconcile forcing a citizen to participate in government who doesn't want to do it, with the guaranteed right to a speedy and public trial........often for accusations of having violated a law based in morality? None of this would be possible in the ongoing Ayn Rand novel which is the libertarian ideal.

Dagny makes the statement several times in "Atlas Shrugged" that she would willingly kill a person who stood in the way of her business goals. That is fundamentally immoral position. That would be against the law in today's society just as it would have been in late 18th century America, and it certainly isn't something the Founders would have countenanced.

The fact is that society survives because people agree to be restrained by certain moral standards, and then they codify those standards into law so that we can all be on the same page about what is acceptable behavior toward one another, and what isn't. Morality is at the very root of the law. Further, society agrees to hire enforcers of those standards, and to establish punishments—which are in themselves violations of another human being's rights—for violating the commonly accepted standards. You simply cannot divorce morality from law. That dog won't hunt; and whenever societies attempt to divorce morality from the law, society suffers and begins to degrade.

I personally lean toward certain (small "l") libertarian standards in that I want to reduce the size of government and onerous laws and policies which intrude upon and infringe my constitutional rights, but I NEVER want the law to be divorced from morality because that is a recipe for social disaster.

[FishInTx]

]

Morality comes from God as does all truth.

Anygunanywhere

So I guess that makes me an immoral liar.
It's things like that which make people like me cringe, if you need a god to tell you not to kill, rape or steal you have some very serious problems.[/quote]

Your own signature line says God graced you to be a Texan....but he didn't grace you with morality? I would hope one would come before the other.

[Charles L. Cotton]

Charles, I do not see him as ultra-liberal on social issues, whats the difference between the government telling you what kind of guns you can have vs. what you do in your own home? It's big government either way it seems you just prefer to have the government tell people whats moral and right and pass laws on it. Myself, I would like them to stay out of everything. Wh

Read the Libertarian Platform I linked to and you'll see it's much more than homosexuality and drug use, far far more. It's no borders, not open border, but unfettered movement of people and money into and out of the United States. It's virtually no military and no military and/or financial involvement with any other country. That's suicide!

Chas.

[Charles L. Cotton]

A true conservative understands that a democracy can only last as long as morality exists among the people - things like value life/don't kill children, pay your debts, be honest, keep marriage vows, etc.

Libertarians in my experience don't understand that. They seem to have one principle - freedom.

While I love freedom too, there are other principles that are as important that impede on my freedom - love of God, of family, of country, morality.

How does "love of God" impede on your freedom?

I see nothing wrong with the Libertarians number one priority being freedom. Freedom for you to practice your religion, freedom for me to not. But when laws are drafted / written based on someones religious beliefs, I have a huge problem with that.

Morality is great. Forced / Governed morality is not.

Anarchy has been tested and it failed. Libertarians are anarchists pure and simple. While they claim they would allow for some very broad and general "laws," they are vague and the overall message is "I can do whatever I want to do." Just their position on the banking industry alone would spell economic collapse.

Chas.