Rush Limbaugh’s insistence that liberals are only of the left, and Glenn Beck’s insistence that all progressives are of the left, may come crashing down on our heads this November, for fewer and fewer professing libertarians are real Libertarians these days, and I have this sinking feeling, because of what happened in Virginia in 2013, these faux-libertarians might hand several key elections to Democrats this fall..
Since the Baby Boomers came of voting age in the 1960s there have always been two types of libertarians out there, and this newer edition has always marched arm-and-arm with the “liberals-of-the-left” in one very crucial respect; a common disdain for the average American citizen. The common man. The C-student. The average Joe and Jolene, the masses who control most of our national elections and almost all local and state elections simply by the size of their numbers. It is these people the Founders referred to when they wrote “We the People”, going on “to form a more perfect union”.. This mob even has its own amendment in the Bill of Rights, the Tenth, which reads:
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
These People are the be-all and end-all of the Constitution. Period. Only some people don’t get that, and in this day and age, “not getting that” is becoming dangerous.
Now, we all know what the Left, whether you call them liberal or progressive, want to do with the masses. Leftists want to remove the masses from any kind of power. They want to return the masses to the legal status they enjoyed in the feudal system, servants to the state, drones, only with better hovels (living conditions) and food choices today. And as a show of their supremacy, Leftists want to be able to tell the masses how far they can go in school, or what they can and cannot learn, down to when and how to go to the bathroom, and even have some monitors looking over their shoulders to make sure they do it right. We all know this about the Left. It’s nothing new, and we could spend days discussing why the Left doesn’t like the Tenth amendment that empowers them, and trust me, it has nothing to do with Civil Rights and Jim Crow.
But by understanding why this new generation of libertarians, who I now call “LIV libertarians”, don’t also like the Tenth actually explains how the original liberals and progressives both morphed into the modern Left, for it’s all about class and how they view the common folk vis a vis their view of themselves. On this issue, they are identical…Modern leftists and modern LIV libertarians are joined at the hip by this one thing, that common disdain and disgust for having to cater to the common folk. All that separates them is only a matter of degree, for LIV libertarians don’t want to put the common man and woman back into servitude. They just don’t believe they should be allowed to vote…at least not on anything important, such as smoking dope. And, oh yes, taxes. But since they can’t take that right away from them outright and still call this a constitutional republic, they do want to take as many items off the table that the masses have historically been able to control through their vote in their own states and communities.
Before Roe v Wade, the people had the right to “legally” deny women abortion-on-demand, and later, after they lost that right, still limit when in the pregnancy term she could have it. Today abortions can be performed in some places up to a few moments after a baby is born. I underscore “legally” here because almost every community had ways around these laws, most often within the purview of local doctors, and almost never from back-alley abortionists with coat-hangers, as Teddy Kennedy once screamed. It was not until college girls got knocked up at school and couldn’t go home and have ol’ Doc Jones fix it that the “right” to an abortion became a compelling need. So the new right the Court created wasn’t nearly as urgent as the right it had just thrown away.
That was forty years ago. Today, of course, the big issue has been the right of the citizens, the People, to decide what is and is not “marriage” in their states. Again, despite three thousand years of tradition, history and almost universal religious agreement as to what constituted “marriage”, a vocal minority and a few judges have decided otherwise. Of course, modern LIV libetarians aren’t religious in training or understanding, so don’t know this simple historical and cultural truth about society, in part because few today even know that the Mayflower was a ship, without the speedy assiatance of Wikipedia. This lack of general knowledge about their country’s history really taints the high self-image these modern A-students have of themselves, but this is what also binds them to their cousins on the Left, for they both share, according to Rush Limbaugh that tag of being “low information voters who don’t know they are low information voters”. This can be a very dangerous condition..
The Supreme Court has yet to decide on same-sex “marriage” although there seems to be no debate at all on same-sex civil unions, which protects all the same rights gays claim they should have under the Due Process clause of the 14th Amendment. So, the Supreme Courts decision will actually center around whether the People still have the power to declare this word, “marriage”, versus the institution of civil union, their own, or not. Only, as just stated, LIV Libertarian are too limited in their mental growth to understand these things.
Finally, to the one issue, and self-indulgence, that really defines the LIV Libertarian, and with Colorado on board, we’re witnessing a signaling of quick national trend toward the legalization of marijuana nationally, its proponents having no earthly idea where that process will lead, once they are forty and their kids, if they have any, or care about, except on visitation weekend. No matter, the LIV-Libertarian’s world ideal of liberty is fulfilled.
The Constitution expressly denies this power of deciding such “moral” and “social’ issues to the federal government, while expressly guaranteeing it to the “C-students” of America, for the People represented the common culture and its moral base. And these common people, in turn represented, and still represent, the morality of survival in our society. Libertarians have no be right to be experimental with our survival as a people. There’s a Darwinian law in there, by the way, only I won’t hold my breath while the LIV’s look for it.
But the Founders clearly did not want academicians, or politicians at the national level, or show people, fergodsakes, at the cultural level, to make these decisions about the very survival of our culture. And for good reason. GK Chesterton wrote nearly a hundred years ago that the common man needs God, and the rich doesn’t, because the common man can’t buy his way out of trouble, or run off to Costa Rica, one step ahead of the sheriff. (My words.). The common man has to have morality, or his House cannot survive and be passed on, while from three generations of statistics, considering the survival rate of the so-called “best and brightest” from my generation, the Baby Boomers, in divorce and a penchant for moral corruption, there seems to be a body of proof of just what happens when the masses are stripped of their authority to guide the whole community in such survival matters. We are teetering.
Big L Libertarians understand this. Judge Napolitano. Maybe even Rand Paul. And even his dad. I’m not sure. Even if religiously agnostic, Big L Libertarians understand the absolute necessity of a common morality, and the importance religion plays in defining it. Big L’s want to see national government removed from interfering with the people’s control of their lives and culture at the local level. Everything that harms America today arises from this one single uninvited role played by government. And on this point every conservative agrees with them, making them natural allies. On the other land LIV libertarians are just like their cousins on the Left, obsessed with denying the People all but the most ceremonial shows of control, such as elections with pre-determined outcomes. They are too much like bedmates with the Left to be believed come election time. So they are natural enemies to conservatives.
In the final tally, what connects LIV Libertarians and their left wing cousins is class, elitism, and as I just mentioned, a know-nothing self-love. Both of these groups, especially those born after 1945, like the Pharisees of the New Testament, define themselves by who they are not.
With this in mind, then, maybe you can understand why the Democrat Party has such an interest in several Libertarians’ entry into key senatorial races which they desperately need to win…for the Democrats; Mary Landrieu, Louisiana, Mike Begich, Alaska, Kay Hagen, North Carolina, Jean Shaheen, New Hampshire, John Walsh or his replacement, Montana and Mark Pryor, Arkansas, all incumbents, are in trouble and that Grimes woman in Kentucky, a Democrat challenger, and Ed Gillespie, a Republican challenger in Virginia also need third party help.
I mention Gillespie’s Virginia campaign because the Libertarian candidate in that race is the same Robert Sarvis who undid Ken Cuccinelli in last year’s gubernatorial election, handing Virginia over to the Democrats. In that election Sarvis snatched 6.6% of the vote and Cuccinelli lost by 2.5%. Here’s the kicker, Sarvis got into the race on the back of Democrat money whose sole purpose was to deny the Republican the win.. This worked, so lok for it to be tried again.
This is an example of what can happen in a close race. Democrats would call Robert Sarvis a “fellow traveler”, and yes, he shares many of their views about the common man and social issues, and the entire constitutional scheme in which the C-student is involved. (None of them are good.) All the senatorial races mentioned above are close enough that even three of four points can matter, for all the Democrats need to do is get within a point or so, since from there, they can generally steal the rest they need.
This is all just politics, and this article is just a heads up. What I don’t like is the theft of the Libertarian brand, for honest Libertarians, Big L Libertarians, need to fight to keep it clean.
David Duke can call himself a Republican, Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, or any other Democrats for that matter, can call herself honest, so I suppose any elitist kid who couldn’t pass a 9th Grade Civics test can call himself a Libertarian. Just be aware of them, and if you know true Libertarians, warn them of what happens when their brand is becoming degenerated, as it is now. Try to assert some standards, Big L’s.. Step in as the GOP did with David Duke. True Libertarians are the natural allies of conservatives, and we have every intention of taking over the Republican Party. But these LIV-Libetarians are the natural friends of the Left, and therefore our natural enemies. If they want to hang out under your banner, at least make them take a test. Let’s just see how many can tell us what the Mayflower was all about without an internet crib sheet. And for the sake of good honest men and women who try to move the conservative banner forward, keep them out of the Republican Precinct Chairman process.
