A few days back I stumbled on a pro-RKBA site and now I can't locate it to provide a link.
The gist of it was, the writer said they agreed with me on guns, but were otherwise "violently opposed" to me because I was "a social conservative."
If someone is going to violently oppose me, I at least deserve to merit the violent opposition.
Someone reading today's posts--which just kind of happened because I was sent the links by readers--might get exactly the opposite impression.
To set the record straight--I am, for the most part, a personal conservative, with occasional lapses accounted for by my status as a flawed human being.
So when I write about prostitution, I'm not endorsing it--I condemn it. I think it is immoral and degrading to both parties. I have never felt inclined to procure the services of one because I have always felt that way. But I will not endorse the use of government force to stop you--unless of course you remove volition or bring minors into it, and that's a whole 'nother story.
Likewise my observations on the drug war. By way of disclosure, I have one of my Red's Trading Post coffee mugs sitting before me as I type. Tonight I will have some Cabernet with dinner and enjoy a nice big bad-for-me maduro afterward. But I don't endorse using the other stuff (and know some cannabis aficionados will disagree with me, but sorry, it makes you stupid), and believe the obvious--the harder stuff is just plain bad for ya and bad for everyone around you.
So as a personal conservative, I am against flesh peddling and against drug abuse--I just happen to believe that non-coercive voluntary interventions by caring people would be more humane and effective at actually reducing abuse and rehabilitating lost souls than the present iron fist/grow more state tentacles methodology.
Because I also observe that government excess is bad for me and everyone around, too, and of the two threats, that's the more pervasive and destructive one, and the one I have the least ability to protect myself and my loved ones against.
Friday, May 02, 2008
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3 comments:
I constantly get called "a conservative" by liberals, and a "liberal" by conservatives. People can't seem to stretch their minds far enough to see the real picture: "left and right" are illusions. It is really about authoritarians and libertarians. Do you believe it is OK to tell others how to live, or do you respect that as long as they harm no one else, it is their life?
"Political tags--such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and so forth--are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire. The former are idealists acting from highest motives for the greatest good of the greatest number. The latter are surly curmudgeons, suspicious and lacking in altruism. But they make better neighbors than the other sort." - Robert Heinlein
Yep, I've been called a surly curmudgeon.
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