Bobby Lipkin says that I can't be what I say I am, because a "libertarian/social conservative" is an oxymoron (kind of like Subtantive Due Process, maybe?).
Almost no one is a 100% libertarian. Lots of liberals who consider themselves libertarian support all sorts of laws restricting economic liberty such as minimum wage laws, antidiscrimination laws, high taxes, school taxes that restrict educational choice by funding a government educational monopoly, etc.
I strongly support the liberties (including the economic liberties) expressly contained in the written Constitution. I go to the wall for speech, free exercise, the protection of property from uncompensated takings (including regulatory takings), etc. I don't find any constitutional protection for sodomy and abortion. Substantive Due Process is just a nice name for judicial tyranny. Moreover, I believe that sexual conduct is not merely personal and private, but has enormous third party consequences (abortion kills a third person; stds are a major health problem; illegimacy results in poverty and children denied the presence of a father; civil marriage involves societal recognition and support of relationships and serves an educative function for society about the ideal of marriage as the foundation of society).
So I am a libertarian in the sense that I support a state with low taxes and lots of freedom of speech, religion, school choice, property and economic liberties, etc. But I am a social conservative because I believe that the sexual revolution has been deadly and has imposed enormous costs (abotion, illegitimacy, disease including terminal and incurable diseases) on society.
Cheers, Rick Duncan
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
How in the world can a libertarian be a social conservative? Similarly, how can a libertarian fault rights because they are allegedly "invented" by courts? Should any self-respecting libertarian reject "rights" only if they are not part of natural law or whatever he or she deems the correct political theory of rights? And isn't the role of the courts in determining the correct set of rights completely irrelevant to rights embraced by libertarian theory? In other words, one would think that a libertarian--even a constitutional libertarian--wouldn't care a bit about whether courts "invented" rights just so long as normative political theory embraces those rights?In a message dated 7/25/2005 11:21:17 PM Eastern Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:am a libertarian/social conservative (I like the liberties that are expressed in the Constitution, the ones I have trouble with are the deadly ones the liberals on the Court have invented),BobbyRobert Justin Lipkin_______________________________________________
Professor of Law
Widener University School of Law
Delaware
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Rick Duncan
Welpton Professor of Law
University of Nebraska College of Law
Lincoln, NE 68583-0902
"When the Round Table is broken every man must follow either Galahad or Mordred: middle things are gone." C.S.Lewis, Grand Miracle
"I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, ! briefed, debriefed, or numbered." --The Prisoner
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