A Crossroads

Tuesday 16 November 2010 - Filed under Constitution + Dumbassery + Government + health care + War on Drugs

One idea that I’ve espoused since the beginning of the newfound limited government movement from the right is that so-called conservatives will come to a crossroads; a point at which they must decide what is more important: small government and individual liberty, or the enforcement of their moral agenda. Fortunately, it seems that some conservatives are catching on. The National Review:

If the generation of “limited government” lawmakers freshly chosen to man the trenches in Washington wishes to be taken seriously, the butcher’s bill must include some of the social conservatives’ sacred cows.

Starting with the War on Drugs.

Many conservatives have long argued that the federal government is broadly empowered to prosecute the drug war under Congress’s authority over interstate commerce. In the name of the drug war, they have been willing to allow federal law-enforcement officers to prosecute seriously ill patients who use medical marijuana in compliance with their states’ laws.

Many of those same conservatives are now finding that the terrible, swift sword of expansive federal power that they endorsed in the name of drug prohibition has now been turned on them in the form of Obamacare’s individual mandate.

If the conservative constituencies have a brain, they will catch on. Any justification conservatards use for big government in furtherance of their moral agenda WILL be co-opted for use by the terminally libertarded in furtherance of curtailing our liberty (and vice-versa). That’s simply how the game is played. There is no such thing as conservative position which states “small government except when I feel it’s appropriate for big government”. That’s the position of a statist authroitarian.

2010-11-16  »  madlibertarianguy