I was thinking about the whole debate and then the vote on North Carolina’s gay marriage amendment today. One of the most interesting realizations was the number of liberals who voted with me today.
Think about it. I’ve been advocating Liberty, real individual Liberty free of state coercion, for years now. I’m as for two gay men getting married as I am for the owner of a bar refusing to serve those two gay men. I’m as for the right to open a barber shop without a barber’s license as I am for allowing people to suffer the consequences of not obtaining health insurance.
Quite simply, I have a long standing history of advocating for the Liberty of the individual. The Left most certainly does NOT.
The left clearly advocates for the state to intervene to feed people.
The left clearly advocates for the state to house people, to send people to college, to provide medical care and retirement.
The left is ALL about the state controlling people’s lives and restricting individual Liberty until the Statue of Liberty herself pukes. The idea of Liberty to the Leftist is foreign and on that is despised and feared.
Why is it then, that now, in this debate, the Leftist resonates with the Libertarian?
Fascinating.
Oh bullfeathers. The left is about liberty and liberation. They just don’t agree that the state is always the main body that can deny liberty, so can powerful actors who control wealth and the business world. The left has been about anti-discrimination, where liberty has been denied to people on the basis of race, gender and other factors. The left has been about trying to expand liberty to the poor by helping them get the tools to better themselves and become independent, better educated, and able to achieve more. The fundamental goal of the left is expansion of freedom.
If you have a bunch of people impoverished, unable to get an education, lacking health care and shelter they are fundamentally not truly free. Now there can be debates about what makes good policy, what freedom means, how to balance helping people have the freedom to live more productive lives (rather than starving or lacking education) vs. too much interference by government.
Now, you can say there are real differences in understanding freedom in context, what it means, and how to achieve it. But saying the left isn’t about expanding freedom is like saying the right wants the wealthy to have all the power and wealth and doesn’t care if the poor starve and die. It’s just wrong.
The left is about liberty and liberation.
This isn’t true. If the Left were all about Liberty, the Left would not be confiscating money from the producers and redistributing it to the folks who don’t work. This takes the form of negative federal income tax checks, unemployment, medicare, medicaid, food stamps, section 8 and all kinds of educational allowances.
The left has been about trying to expand liberty to the poor by helping them get the tools to better themselves and become independent, better educated, and able to achieve more.
The fact that two people, each having the same access to the same system, end up in different life scenarios is not an indication that one experienced less Liberty. In general it means that one is more able than the other.
If you have a bunch of people impoverished, unable to get an education, lacking health care and shelter they are fundamentally not truly free.
Strictly speaking, they are. There is no argument that can be made that individuals living in an age before state sponsored health care were less free than individual alive today. Health care is not a per-requisite of Liberty.
But saying the left isn’t about expanding freedom is like saying the right wants the wealthy to have all the power and wealth and doesn’t care if the poor starve and die. It’s just wrong.
The individual leftist has mostly noble goals. Feed the poor, educate the masses, heal the sick…It’s all as noble as noble can be. The problem I have with the Leftist is that they refuse to provide relief themselves. Rather they vote politicians who confiscate the wealth of others and distribute money that isn’t theirs in ways that aren’t effective.
If you wanna feed the poor, organize a fundraiser, sell tickets and provide for the poor. Debbie Democrat voting that my money be used to support her version of charity is not an example of Liberty.