If only Murray was around to see this..
An overwhelming majority of delegates to the Maine Republican convention recently voted to scrap the proposed party platform and replace it with a document created by a group of liberty activists.
The document calls for the elimination of the Department of Education, the Federal Reserve, a drastic cut in spending while balancing the budget, instituting a plan for paying down the debt, proclaiming that generational debt shifting is immoral and unconscionable and will not be tolerated, asserting the 10th Amendment sovereignty right of the State of Maine, insisting on the 2nd Amendment right to bear arms, supporting a “Read the Bills” act, to insure clarity, eliminating the corruption associated with earmarks, pork and riders, a call for transparent and honest reporting of economic statistics free of gimmicks and distortions while suggesting a return to the principles of “Austrian Economics,” and a redirection of the economy to one of incentives toward savings and investment.
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Their continued emphasis on gay hate is disappointing. Another reason I can’t join in on any “Republican” party surge.
So, saying “marriage is between one man and one woman” is gay hate? Hrm, I believe your point of view is skewed. The Religious ceremony called marriage, as defined by Christians, is quite clearly between one man and one woman. What the government has to do with that is beyond me. Why we must be licensed by the state to recognize that union is the root cause of this issue. The government should care less about defining marriage and more about defining inheritance, or custody, or whatever legal purpose they might think a marriage license is filling.
Quite. Marriage has nothing whatever to do with government and therefore the legal issues involved are only that: legal issues. This is simply another instance of government re-defining terms in order to obfuscate an issue. The supreme court can call anything it wants a person. I speak English and refuse to learn their new language.
So what if it is defined by Christians that way?
Gay couples may join voluntary agreements they call marriage, a stable, monogamic union sactioned by social custom. Remember that FA Hayek defines that custom is “law” and therefore is older than legislation.
It is simply absurd to forbid two willing adults to make voluntary agreements.
Stading against it is totalitarianism.
“Gay couples may join voluntary agreements they call marriage…”
Abraham Lincoln once asked an audience how many legs a dog would have, if you called a tail a leg. They answered “Five”. He responded that the correct answer is four; a tail is not a leg, no matter what you call it.
Similarly, a union between two gays is not a marriage, no matter what gays (or the government, for that matter) call it. Marriage is, fundamentally, a religious concept.
“…a stable, monogamic union sactioned by social custom.”
But “social custom” is exactly why people object to calling a union between two gay people a marriage! If that were not the case, there wouldn’t be such a problem.
“It is simply absurd to forbid two willing adults to make voluntary agreements.”
I agree, as long as the government does not unilaterally proclaim that the voluntary agreement is a marriage. Here’s why I object. Some churches obviously object to marrying gays. If the “right” of gays to “marry” is enforced by the government, then the churches that refuse to do so may be punished as hate criminals. This is a clear violation of the principle of separation of church and state, and it’s very dangerous. (Besides, gays already have the right to marry. A gay man has every bit as much right to marry a woman as I do. The fact that he does not care to do so is irrelevant to the fact that he has the right.)
This is why I dislike the “Tea Party” thing. Some of the stuff is great. Yes shut down the Federal Reserve System, but do it now before they completely destroy the most wealth and productive economy to ever exist. And pick your federal department and you can eliminate it as they only hurt society. But notice that there is no mention of the two elephants in the room: anti-Social in-Security and “get your government hands off my” anti-Medicare.
This leads me to believe that these folks care little about the Fed or other programs and simply want enough wealth around to keep their little pets going as long as possible.
If you really want a platform then simply state that you are for the destruction of these systems:
1. Federal Reserve and the entire banking system to be replaced with a completely private system.
2. Social Security to be replaced with private systems.
3. Medicare to be replaced with fee for service medicine.
I agree with you 100% – nobody touches Medicare and Social Security. But, you know, even our glorious Mr Libertarian Ron Paul doesn’t dare to touch them either. He even promises to use the savings from defense budget cuts to “shore up” these programs! To increase spending on Medicare and social security. That is much worse than this platform.
The only guy who even dared to mention some kind of reform of Medicare and Social Security was Paul Ryan. However, his proposals are really insufficient and cosmetic, especially as far as Social Security is concerned. That’s the biggest problem with the Tea Party movement in general – everyone is happy to capitalize on politically popular things, such as “end the Fed and bailouts”, “cut the deficit” or in some cases “get our troops home”. But nobody dares to stick his neck out on the chopping block a little bit more and say – entitlements must be abolished because they are going to eat 70% of federal budget in a decade and ruin this country! Forget about the bullshit like “reforming earmarks”, “eliminate waste” or “abolish the corporate welfare”, the real fiscal hole is created by entitlements. That’s a little bit trickier thing to do.
Why would you post such a blatant and easily refuted lie? Ron Paul has always advocated getting rid of the compulsory payments Social Security and Medicare. Just because he advocates taking the money that was saved in the name of SS recipients, that is currently being squandered on empire, and making those promised payments of the people’s own money back to them, does not mean he supports continuing to force people to pay into the system.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul647.html
notice that there is no mention of the two elephants in the room: anti-Social in-Security and “get your government hands off my” anti-MedicareThe perfect really is the enemy of the good it appears. Capital “L” libertarians resemble paleo-conservatives in that you revel in resisting any movement toward sanity unless it encompasses every single thing you believe.
Politics is not philosophy.
My mistake, Social Security is mentioned but only in that the platform wants Congress to have to use the system. Big whoop!!!!
At least unlike MSNBC in general and Maddow in particular, I am willing to admit my little mistakes.
Yes, Wayne, it is latent gay hate. Why mention it at all, if they really intend to say that the state should get out of the marriage business? Because that’s not what they intend. If they said that, I could support this.
They fully intend the state to stay in the marriage business and fully intend to exclude a portion of the population from that state action. It’s hard to see when it doesn’t effect you, but it’s crystal clear the message they’re sending.
I agree with Bogart. These people aren’t actually serious. If they were, they would go after all state entitlements, including Social Security. But they won’t because so many of them live off the state. It reminds me of Bastiat: “Now since man is naturally inclined to avoid pain — and since labor is pain in itself — it follows that men will resort to plunder whenever plunder is easier than work.”
But it really is not gay hate so much as it is a case of cognitive dissonance. More likely than not most of them have never even considered the concept of having the state get out of setting contractual relationship standards (which is what marriage really is). The whole idea is probably alien to them. I used to buy this line of reason openly when I had no really good concept of property rights and what that really entails. It wasn’t gay hate, it was internal ideological contradiction.
In the vast majority of cases where folks are saying that they are against gay marriage, it really does just come down to the definition of it. This seems to me to be evident by the widescale support for the “civil unions” which extend most or all of the same property contracts to homosexuals. It looks like they just can’t divorce themselves of the idea that the state ought not at all be involved in marriage.
How can a small government movement think it is ok for
the government to decide who can and cannot get married?
Marriage is a private contract between two adults.
Freedom of contract is one of the most basic principles of
libertarian philosophy. The Tea Party seems to believe in small
government except when they want the government to force
their moral values on other people.
I love these “Tea Party”/”Out of Office Republican” documents. They hate “Big Government” except in the areas of:
1. Stealing money from poor young people and giving it to wealthier old people. Also stealing money from not so poor young people and giving it to not so wealthy old people which is also completely immoral.
2. Stealing money from poor young people, stealing precious time and equipment from providers, and giving it to a bloated medical bureaucracy that provides medical care to wealthy and not so wealthy old people for less than what that care it costs currently but significantly more than what it would cost absent the stealing, licensing and other bureaucracy costs.
3. Killing people in foreign countries(As long as a majority of 535 bureaucrats are for it). Also interfering in their affairs and using racial and ethnic tensions to stir up violence and take advantage of other people.
4. Killing people and harassing them in the territory of the USA.
5. Causing the war against people called the “Drug War” to ruin the economic and political systems in Mexico and have a continuous violent border war with the country that the territory of the USA stole from the territory of Mexico 180 years ago.
6. Turing the normally peaceful borders of the USA into police states or worse war zones as the US GOV annoys and steals money from people hoping to move to the USA to sell their labor in the hope of improving their lives and those of all the US GOV certified USA residents.
It is obviously not a perfect document. We can take satisfaction that this movement is trending in the direction of liberty. Do we get the government we deserve? The real work lies in the continuing education of the people to classic liberal ideals.
There is absolutely no restriction anywhere in the US on homosexuals calling their unions
“marriages.” How is anti-gay to oppose the State granting formal recognition to these
unions as marriages, which then makes available the whole apparatus of anti-discrimination
law to homosexuals to gain access to private property that they otherwise wouldn’t be able to?
Being originally from Maine, I was cautiously optimistic when I read about this a few weeks back. Maine is currently a strange state politically. It has 2 democratic representatives and a democratic governor, but two republican senators. Of course, these senators do not support things like the constitution, for example and in many cases out-”liberal” the democrats. In others words, Maine is a statist’s state but every no and again something like this will come along.
As for the group discussed in the post, someone made a comment that I believe is very apt. The group is trending in the right direction, but they (as well as everyone else) needs more information on these issues, particularly the philosophical foundation for anti-statism.
It was fun to watch the local media huff and puff about how these radicals should be cast aside for their beliefs and that if the republican candidates adopt these, the dems will win easily. Obviously the MSM hopes this to be true, but no one really knows for sure what will happen if more and more people are reached with our message.
Allowing gay marriage and gay adoption is one more step towards implosion of the State regulation system of social benefits, no doubt. In a way it’s taking a step back to make a bigger jump thus…
I’m not sure I understand what you’re saying here; are you saying that if the State
recognizes gay marriage, the system will go bankrupt? Or that it will engender
greater resistance/opposition to the State?
Whatever brings nullification to the forefront is good thing!
“Murray Rothbard Meet the New Maine Republicans”
No doubt, that would be another one of Rothbard’s failed alliances.
Its a trend in the right direction. Of course they don’t mention everything they don’t mention.
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