Libertarians will agree with the court, but will secretly add that really, Ashcroft torching the Fourth Amendment is no better or worse than, say, the government using tax monies to fund Head Start programmes.
Oh, you want it? You got it, beeyotch!
No, I'm not going to say crap like that. I WILL play my role, however, by saying that I'm old enough to remember the 1990's, when civil liberties were under genuine assault by Democrats. Try taking this Kerry-Ashcroft quiz.
To argue the broader point, if I remember my Milton Friedman, Capitalism in Freedom was not saying that those types of interventions are morally equivalent so much as that in the real world it's damned difficult to have policies that revere "civil rights" while disregarding private property.
That's right, Mark, Janet Reno was awful.
But then Clinton was a conservative. And he didn't get my vote in '96.
Yes, that's the clever Miltie. Even to those whose God is money he knew not to argue moral equivalence so much as falsely tie both together. I say falsely, unless you believe that Sweden runs a gulag.
The only case I can think of in which those socialistic democracies in Europe are substantively less-free than US is in some of the Hate Speech laws -- i.e. Germany's ban on NeoNazi speech -- which I disagree with but is understandable. Would Uncle Miltie say there's a causal relation?
In fact, Mark, if you'll consider China, you'll see how Friedmanism is dispoven in the reverse. Sure, the average chinese can now "enjoy" the freedom to eat at KFC, but if he protests at Tiannenmen, he'll still be run over by a tank. Where's that inevitable corrolary freedom there? surely if the two were so interdependent, China would be doing better on the rights that matter? Nope, instead, private property does matter (Neosporin cheers) but there is no free speech or press or privacy (Neosporin ..also cheers).
I've always thought that the Libertarian/Conservatarian dream society was Singapore -- the realities of which leave Uncle Miltie's writings as worth so much toilet paper. One would think you guys'd learn after Pinochet, but I guess it's hard to give up the Fiscal-Fascist surfboard that is Chicago Dreamin'.
Hey, don't be insulted, though. I'm not going off on you like I do Neosporin. But I would like you to address why it is that wherever Milties schemes have been implemented, or indeed why it is that when precious precious "economic freedom" has been airlifted, as it were, from chicago to some poor third world victim, why the other "corrolary" freedoms never go with it.
why it is that wherever Milties schemes have been implemented, or indeed why it is that when precious precious "economic freedom" has been airlifted, as it were, from chicago to some poor third world victim, why the other "corrolary" freedoms never go with it.
You miss the whole point of peacenik libertarianism. We (by which I mean I and anyone who fully agrees with me on every issue) don't believe in government's airlifting ANYTHING. Government programs to promote libertarianism are like orgies to promote chastity.
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