Talk-Polywell.org

In more than one of the recent primaries, I noticed articles citing candidates with ultra-conservative Libertarian politics.

I am so confused. My understanding was that the Libertarian party platform is as outlined here:

http://www.lp.org/platform

Now, granted, in this platform are some pretty old-fashioned ideas, such as personal responsibility, but there is also some remarkably liberal thinking, such as not giving a gnats eyelash what someone's sexual orientation is, and taking a view that abortion is a matter of personal responsibility and morals, not government mandate. Even recreational drug use would be permitted. And they support freedom of migration.

But I guess since all this sounds remarkably like what Goldwater believed, it must be intolerably conservative.

Generally libertarian is socially liberal, economically conservative. You do hear libertarian ideas described as "conservative" sometimes, usually to scare progressives.

What's funny is that Prohibition I was actually a Progressive movement.

Because of the correlation between drinking and domestic violence—many drunken husbands abused family members—the temperance movement existed alongside various women's rights and other movements, including the Progressive movement, and often the same activists were involved in all of the above. Many notable voices of the time, ranging from Lucy Webb Hayes to Susan B. Anthony, were active in the movement. In Canada, Nellie McClung was a longstanding advocate of temperance. As with most social movements, there was a gamut of activists running from violent (Carrie Nation) to mild (Neal S. Dow).

For decades prohibition was seen by temperance movement zealots and their followers as the almost magical solution to the nation's poverty, crime, violence, and other ills.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temperance ... ted_States

Yeah, that didn't work out so well.

TallDave wrote:Generally libertarian is socially liberal, economically conservative. You do hear libertarian ideas described as "conservative" sometimes, usually to scare progressives.

What's funny is that Prohibition I was actually a Progressive movement.

Because of the correlation between drinking and domestic violence—many drunken husbands abused family members—the temperance movement existed alongside various women's rights and other movements, including the Progressive movement, and often the same activists were involved in all of the above. Many notable voices of the time, ranging from Lucy Webb Hayes to Susan B. Anthony, were active in the movement. In Canada, Nellie McClung was a longstanding advocate of temperance. As with most social movements, there was a gamut of activists running from violent (Carrie Nation) to mild (Neal S. Dow).

For decades prohibition was seen by temperance movement zealots and their followers as the almost magical solution to the nation's poverty, crime, violence, and other ills.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temperance ... ted_States

Yeah, that didn't work out so well.

Well... so they keep telling us. The idea might have worked had it been implemented in the "boiling frog" method, which is how they promote Gun Control and the "Gay" agenda. Witness the campaign against smoking. I dare say it will eventually succeed in eliminating smoking.


Obviously some rapid implementation worked. Slavery was made illegal, Abortion was outlawed in the late 1800s, Women acquired greater legal rights in the early 1920s. (voting)

Had prohibition worked, would we all be better off or worse off? Who knows?

The thing about trying to prohibit alcohol is that it is too easy to make, and the people who made it following prohibition had a very long history of being scofflaws.

Tom Ligon wrote:The thing about trying to prohibit alcohol is that it is too easy to make, and the people who made it following prohibition had a very long history of being scofflaws.

Cigarettes are easy to make as well.

True enough.

You mentioned a "boiling frog" approach, which sounds as if it should have a colorful anecdote to accompany it. I encourage you to share it.

I presume it means pointing out negative consequences. The history of tobacco use is rather interesting. In the early 1600's, Virginia growers were promoting it as a healthy cure-all. In the 1900's Hollywood made it sexy, and the military passed out free cigs by the truckload to the troops. Denial of the health risks was pretty much standard until the 1960's.

However, neither my wife nor I have ever had the habit. If either of us had, the other would never have entered the relationship, because we consider it loathesome. We both drink in moderation, but neither one of us would have considered a relationship with a person prone to getting drunk.

Boiling frog refers to an analogy of putting a frog in a pot of cold water, then turning on low heat. The animal acclimates to the rising temperatures, until by the time it needs to jump out it's too late, and it's cooked.

Diogenes wrote: Had prohibition worked, would we all be better off or worse off? Who knows?

Alcohol prohibition had as much chance of working back then as drug prohibition does now, i.e., none. Unless of course what you mean by "work" is to accumulate more power and graft potential into a small number of hands. In that case it works BEAUTIFULLY!

Diogenes wrote:

Tom Ligon wrote:The thing about trying to prohibit alcohol is that it is too easy to make, and the people who made it following prohibition had a very long history of being scofflaws.

Cigarettes are easy to make as well.

And as long as they are LEGAL and not taxed TOO much, they will continue to be slowly ground into the dust by public sentiment. Make them ILLEGAL, and see how soon the usage will sky-rocket!

Drugs are as prevalent as they are because they are illegal and the scofflaws (thanks Tom) are out PUSHING them. Make them legal and tax them at 2/3 the current street price and the market will disappear almost over-night. Ok, the NEW market will disappear over-night.

Tom Ligon wrote:True enough.

You mentioned a "boiling frog" approach, which sounds as if it should have a colorful anecdote to accompany it. I encourage you to share it.

I'm sorry, I thought everyone was familiar with the idea. The "Boiling Frog" approach has to do with how something is implemented.


Let's say you want to boil a frog. If you put a pot of water on the burner and bring it to a boil, and then put the frog in it, the frog will immediately react to the boiling water and jump out.

However, if you put the frog in a pot of room temperature water, and then very slowly keep turning up the heat, the frog will remain in the water until it is cooked.

The slowly evolving methods being used to promote socialism in this country, and the slowly evolving methods for wiping out smoking in America are examples of the "Boiling Frog" technique.


Basically, if you do something slowly enough and in incremental stages, people won't realize their danger until it is too late. Had this methodology been used on Alcohol Prohibition, it may very well have been successful. A tax here, a regulation there... pretty soon the stuff could have been bureaucrated out of existence!

KitemanSA wrote:

Diogenes wrote: Had prohibition worked, would we all be better off or worse off? Who knows?

Alcohol prohibition had as much chance of working back then as drug prohibition does now, i.e., none. Unless of course what you mean by "work" is to accumulate more power and graft potential into a small number of hands. In that case it works BEAUTIFULLY!

Watch what has been happening to cigarettes since the 1960s. Tell me that you can't see a trend.


( I don't smoke, I consider it to be a vile nasty habit, and I wish everyone would quit. However, if they want to smoke, it is their lungs they are ruining, not mine. )

KitemanSA wrote:

Diogenes wrote:

Tom Ligon wrote:The thing about trying to prohibit alcohol is that it is too easy to make, and the people who made it following prohibition had a very long history of being scofflaws.

Cigarettes are easy to make as well.

And as long as they are LEGAL and not taxed TOO much, they will continue to be slowly ground into the dust by public sentiment. Make them ILLEGAL, and see how soon the usage will sky-rocket!

Drugs are as prevalent as they are because they are illegal and the scofflaws (thanks Tom) are out PUSHING them. Make them legal and tax them at 2/3 the current street price and the market will disappear almost over-night. Ok, the NEW market will disappear over-night.

Okay, so you know what i'm talking about. Yeah, that's my point, and I suspect the same technique would have worked to eliminate alcohol, but that's not how they went about it.

Abortion was outlawed in the late 1800s

Really? I was under the impression that there was a thriving black market in abortion. That was certainly the case in California before it legalized abortion (late 60s or early 70s IIRC).

Or are you being sarcastic?

Of course it was not to hard to outlaw slavery by fiat. It had become marginally profitable.

The government has priced all but the hard core cigarette addicts out of the market.


Schizophrenia and Tobacco

We stray from my original point, and I'd like to attempt to induce some commentary on it.

Scanning the news articles on various candidates in the recent primaries, I kept noticing Republican candidates being painted as libertarian, with the notion that this makes them ultra-conservative. While I got the impression the writer was probably trying to make them look scarry, I wonder if the tactic works. All it does for me is make me more interested in the candidate, wondering how true the statement really is. Names that crop up in the search of Yahoo News for the words Libertarian Republican include Rand Paul and Nikki Haley, but you'll see widespread hits, almost as if there is a campaign to paint Republican candidates with this brush.

You'll also see an attempt to match up Tea Party Republicans (one heckuva poorly defined bunch), and Sarah Palin (not clear to me she's very libertarian, although Alaskans generally probably have the streak).

Simon and I have discussed this off-line. I tend to have old-fashioned Republican leanings, and the more I learn about Goldwater, the more I long for that kind of Republican. I've noticed if you talk one-on-one with most Republicans, they confess the same feelings. I'd call Goldwater the prototype of the modern Libertarian. So how did the party get off on such a religious bedroom-police prayer-in-schools throw-out-the-immigrants bender? I'm hoping the identification with the Libertarian movement means they're getting back to basic Goldwater philosophy.

Just to be clear, the last Libertarian candidate in a presidential campaign I can actually name was Marilyn Chambers (for VP). Probably never a Republican, definitely not Religious Right. I have to imagine she was the other person who showed up at the convention. Probably scandal-proof ... after a career in the porn industry, she had absolutely no way to hide anything. And if I had known she was running I probably would have voted for that ticket . That's Libertarian!

And looking at the Libertarian platform, you can see the boiling frog effect. Picture people voting to eliminate much of the government and the things we are used to. They'd be worrying about how cold the world would be without that hot water.