Christian Libertarianism

Concur Eddie. Klavan is not only pure genius in that way but pretty damn funny too. Breitbart – if nothing else – surrounds himself with excellent people.

And Eddie it is not you who is the idiot. You can’t blame yourself for seeing what is blatantly obvious.

“Liberty is not a means to a higher end. It is itself the highest political end.”
– Lord Acton

Great words Andrew. There will always be some quibble between Libertarians and Christian conservatives in areas of policy (legalization of vice crimes, etc.), but there should be no problems in seeking common cause at the “macro” level. I’m a devout Southern Baptist libertarian leaning conservative…. in other words… I’m agnostic on pot legalization, but think prostitution should remain illegal. And then I often re-think those positions. Hope to have you on Radio Free Threedonia sometime again soon.

Andrew, while I understand the logic of your piece, it is written from a micro view. Hey, you, do whatever you want, even if I think it’s sinful, but don’t ask me to pay to clean up your mess (i.e. taxes for some program). Okay. Trouble is that society is a macro made up of the collective micro. To paraphrase John Donne, no Libertarian is an island.

Free will affords freedom to do good or evil, but if an increasing number are taking a dump where they live, then that creates a mess we all have to deal with in a collective society. A few high living conservative hedonists isn’t a problem until their behavior is public and indistinguishable from the likewise growing legions of liberal hedonists, many of whom create a stink that we all have to live with.

When the airwaves and the billboards and the magazines and the sidewalks of our nation are rife with libertine self-expression, whether the source is Libertarian or liberal, I still can’t let my kids listen to the radio or watch TV after 7 pm.

Libertarianism aims for a conservative Utopia just as fictional, selfish, and unworkable as the liberal version: Someone else always has to pay for their excesses one way or another, even if not in dollars and cents. Isn’t that just common sense?

Also… I can’t seem to get an answer to this from a dozen atheists so far.

What non-Christian influenced nation would they want to live in today?

Statiscally dominate, or historically imperialized by Christians, what Atheist Communist nation or Islamic would they prefer living in over that of Christian influenced? Any Libeterian Agnostic nations out there? Shouldn’t this be a no-brainer, obvious? I mean how intelligent, logical, and more historically present that Atheist are!

Very Good! I am an Orthodox Christian ( Western Rite ) and I consider myself conservative/libertarian. Thank you for stating why I have thought for a long time. Well done!

You just articulated my basic political belief system: Christian Libertarianism. I am not called to promote laws that keep people from outwardly sinning, I’m called to share Christ with the world. Christ came to save sinners, not the righteous. How will people know that they are sinners if we tell them that by following all our laws they are pretty good people?

While I agree that people are free to choose how they live, I must say that there is another side of this libertarian coin that’s a little cold and unfeeling. I read this philosophy as saying to those who would wallow in the mire of this world, “Hey go ahead and do what you want. I don’t give a frak about you, your health, your wealth, your family, your future. Be warm. Be filled. See ya.” This amounts to a lack of love for our fellow humans to leave them to wallow because it’s their choice. And Jesus did command us to love one another. This does take work and commitment and a level of vulnerability to open ourselves up to ridicule, hatred, and maybe even physical pain and death because we wish to see people live in the dignity to which their humanity entitles them. This is where Jesus comes in because if, in fact, Jesus was a libertarian he wouldn’t have intervened on behalf of the woman caught in adultery, sent her accusers away, and then told her GO AND SIN NO MORE…that requires a judgment, you know. He judged her sin then forgave them THEN restored her dignity. If Jesus was a libertarian I doubt seriously He would have endured his whipping, beatings, being spat on, mocked, a crown of thorns shoved in His head, AND then gone to the cross just to pay for our sins. I think He might have said, had he been an actual libertarian, “Ahhh, so what. Just do what you want to do. NO worries. I think I’ll go have a beer with the boys and discuss this whole sacrifice and remission of sin later with my Father.” If we are going to follow in the footsteps of our Lord then we must do as He did. BUT we have to start with ourselves . The whole log in the eye thing doesn’t mean NEVER judge, it means take care of yourself first, then judge others. God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit do not absolutely fit into any one political theory. Quit trying to justify your political opinions by what you perceive in part in the Bible. You are proof texting which is just as stupid as those who purposely take up snakes because the New Testament declares that we can pick up deadly things and they will not harm us. Proof texting=potentially harmful.

This is what I’ve been saying; I may not be a Christian libertarian, but I _am_ more than capable of following a morally sound, upright code of behavior, and teaching the same to my children.

My “party boy” days were left behind in my 20s.

What nonsense! Jesus said a lot of things, including “The world hated me for I testified of it’s wickedness. How much more will they hate you for being my disciple”. This country was settled, then founded, by people who had the Biblical Christian world view. “..the Laws of nature and Nature’s God” is defined in Locke’s writings and Blackstone’s commentaries as the God of Scriptures.
“The doctrines thus delivered we call the revealed or divine law, and they are to be found only in the Holy Scriptures. These precepts, when revealed, are found upon comparison to be really a part of the original law of nature, as they tend in all their consequences to man’s felicity.” (8)
1 William Blackstone, Commentaries 42.

Why do you think there were thousands of “Blue Laws” that date to the Founding and before…laws that made illegal many acts defined as immoral from a Biblical perspective? Because they were all Christian conservatives, NOT libertarians…

The first public school in America, in 17th century Pennsylvania, was built to teach people to read so they could read the Bible so no law contradicting the Bible could be passed!

Our libertine Constitution was written in a time when almost everyone was what we’d call a Fundamentalist Christian today. Quakers spoke in tongues, the whole thing was very literal, etc. We can argue about how religious some or most of the Founders may have been, the coffee table book of early Presidents my parents had claimed Deism for most of the early ones, but it cannot be argued that it was a product of that culture and that it worked in that culture. People had no trouble distinguishing between their civic life and their religious life, at least as far as governance went. And Fundamentalists have been here 230 years without eroding those liberties to any significant extent.

It’s when people melded the religious instinct with governance itself that we got into trouble. I’m a non-believer, but I know damned well I’m better off with people having Jesus in the Jesus-shaped hole in their hearts, than the State. I’m pro-Christian out of simple self-interest.

I also think that Christians who want to use the government to force religion on people (a very small fraction of Christians) are bad Christians. I was raised in a church and we were never encouraged to try to infringe on others’ free will.

I couldn’t agree more. I’ve always felt that others’ moral choices that do not directly affect me are between the him/her and God. Well said.

Driefromseattle:
I think there is a crucial aspect of libertarianism that you are missing here. There is nothing that states that one should not or could not care about their fellow humans, but that the state should have as little involvement in it as possible. For instance, if one wished to give to the homeless, the typical statist solution would be to petition the government to open up shelters and pay for them using the public’s money. A libertarian in this situation would donate to a private charity or church group in order to create the same solution, but using money only from those who wish to do the same. If someone wishes to help a cause, they are free to do so, but if someone chooses to live their life selfishly, there is no tax collector to tell them that they cannot. The rewards of goodwill, or the lack thereof, are not known in this life.

Let’s try again…

Synova said: “a ‘libertarian’ view of gay marriage is… Get the State out of the business of formalizing marriages.”
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As a classical liberal christian, I think it should be precisely the other way round. We need to ministers out of the business of acting as agents of the state. Any couple who wants to get married(man+woman, man+man, whatever) should go to the courthouse and get a marriage license, then find a justice of the peace and get married. THEN, if they want to celebrate that relationship in a church, (and they can find a church willing to do it), then go right ahead.

Ministers don’t sign the legal birth certificate when they baptize; they don’t sign the death certificate when conducting a funeral-why should they sign the marriage certificate when conducting the religious ceremony signifying a marriage covenant? Get the church out of the state’s business, and vice-versa.

The issue is coercion.

There is nothing about being libertarian that says a person shouldn’t be involved in their community or do their best to help people or preaching on street corners or volunteering to feed the homeless or doing their best to convince everyone that drugs are bad for you. I can try to convince you of anything, I can try to persuade in order to get other people to agree with me and *voluntarily* modify their own behavior.

The issue is coercion.

Since libertarians aren’t anarchists, there are parameters defining (roughly) the exceptions to the no-coercion rule. I, or the State, can stop you from stealing my stuff or punish you for stealing my stuff. I, or the State, can stop you from assaulting me or punish you for assaulting me. Laws against murder and theft stand. Contracts freely entered into can be enforced. And we can discuss to what extent behavior that harms others, things like driving drunk or dumping toxic waste or smoking cigarettes in public, can be criminalized. We can discuss pre-emptive sorts of self-defense and international military/foreign policy.

Sure, there are any number of libertarians who are most interested in living a life of legal debauchery without a single care for their fellow humans, but most have a far more sophisticated understanding of the general philosophy and understand what *else* liberty is good for.

In response to Driefromseattle”

I read this philosophy as saying to those who would wallow in the mire of this world

Correct, we all do. If you ask me, that’s the essence of Christianity, the acceptance of imperfect life in an imperfect world.

They key difference is this, with libertarianism you can not force me to help you. But that does not mean I won’t choose to help you anyway. And I do, I support many charities. And in my opinion, I donate my own money much more efficiently and to much more worthy causes than the government, which says I will pay, or I will lose my home and go to jail.

There’s nothing about libertarianism that says we won’t help our fellow man, all it says is we prefer not to do it at the barrel of government’s gun.

I appreciate the civil back and forth…

Mr. Klavan seems to have tried to offer a Christianized, flowery version of “I won’t judge you if you don’t judge me.” That is the heartbeat of liberalism culturally. And culture is what I’m talking about, not government. Jesus didn’t seek to change government, but souls, and souls make up the culture, do they not? Live and let live is diametrically opposed to the teachings of Jesus Christ. Not once did he let anyone off the hook for their sins; he was gentle with those who didn’t know any better and harsh with those who did.

But as for government, Mr. Knorr your historicity is sorely lacking. You apparently know little more about the intentions of Founders than what you wish they were. There may have always been Libertarians influencing America, but America has never been a Libertarian nation. How would you have reacted when Jefferson and others demanded that all public school children study the Bible, for example?

Nonetheless, the implication of many Libertarian posters here is that Christian conservatives are always arguing the conflation of Christianity with civil law. While there are many thousands of instances where that has been done in America since its founding, I am considering the movie that sparked the Scott-Klavan conversation: What’s the difference *culturally* whether license is rife at the whim of a Libertarian or at the whim of a liberal? What difference does it make for the net impact on our society? So, I’m not talking primarily about law — I’m talking about personal responsibility and collective expectations, regardless of whether the source of one’s morality is Jesus Christ or Benjamin Franklin.

And finally, cynlover01 (a peculiar nom for a “christian”) if you think Christianity is the acceptance of the imperfect in us and in our society, well, you would benefit by digging a little deeper into the pages of the faith’s source. Forgiveness is not the same as acceptance. Per the New Testament, far from it.

fits into the plan of the population reduction http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article6350303.ece

Population control called key to deal , I think this is why we saw the health care bill target elderly folks with restrictions on treatment with Medicare cuts .

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2009-12/10/content_9151129.htm

http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/10/un_agenda_21_coming_to_a_neigh.html

fits into the plan of the population reduction http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article6350303.ece

Population control called key to deal , I think this is why we saw the health care bill target elderly folks with restrictions on treatment with Medicare cuts .

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2009-12/10/content_9151129.htm

http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/10/un_agenda_21_coming_to_a_neigh.html

http://www.un.org/documents/ga/conf151/aconf15126-3annex3.htm
this is a UN agenda 21 plan for forest lands to speed up the rate of famine

http://standeyo.com/NEWS/09_Food_Water/091229.Obama.forests.not.food.html
this is Obama’s Plan for our forest lands , he wants the USDA to subsidies the planting of over 50 Million acres of our Prime Farmland in the Midwest to Trees , just trees , so we can speed up the famine rate , did we the people get to be a part of this debate ??? creating the crisis to then look like the savior ????? thats what they did with the Financial sectors in the world under the control of the Club of Rome .

I am a fan as of a couple days ago. Love your thoughts!

Libertarianism is a single value moral system, and like all such, I think, it can lead to traps where the answers it renders are inhumane and unreasonable.

The Samurai had a similar system, but their value was Obedience to Right Authority, which is an important value. However when a system says that the command ‘kill your wife, your children, and then yourself’ is a proper command, there is something wrong with that moral system.

Conservatism is a triple value system. It honors liberty, and to a lesser degree virtue, and to a degree societal survival. This makes it less simplistic and more realistic than Libertarianism, and leads to a good bit of mushiness of thought on what a Conservative is.

However the notion that you could create a simple set of principles that all Libertarians would agree to is laughable. Neal Boortz, #1 Libertarian at the time, was not allowed to speak at the Libertarian Party so I hear. Libertarians are frequently dogmatic purists with more schisms than Baptists.

Another side note about Libertarians. Its not the Conservatives picking the fight. Its the Libertarians who keep constantly saying ‘we wish you would shut up about those social issues’ and doing the Liberals work for them. If you want a sixty percent victory, the Libertarians need to stop trying to control the Conservatives and instead encourage them, unleash them, and watch as a tidal wave of liberating force tears down the walls of the statists.

As a Christian, I have to say that many Christians I know act more like Libertarianss than Christians. They seek the blessings from Jesus, but don’t want to actually work at it. Both seem to agree on the same issues, but don’t want to get their hands dirty and go something about anything. Oh, they give to the latest social problems like Haiti, but didn’t do anything about Haiti’s real issues before the quake. Libertarians seem to line John Galt, but won’t walk away from the nice life they have. At work I tell my fellow employees I won’t think for them. They usually walk away and struggle to find a solution to their problems (they are always liberalsl BTW). Libertarians and Christians really believe if they can put in the right people in office things will get better. Just plain bunk. Read the Bible, GOD only agreed for Isreal to have a king because they lost their faith in GOD. The results of their and every nation has been tragic. Man can’t fix the problems he creates. So do we fix things? Stop talking and debating and do GOD’s will. The results will surprise you.