Tuesday, July 11, 2006

Our Freedom & Our Liberty . . .

A.C. Kleinheider alerts me to the . . . thoughts of Glen Dean on the subject of "libertarian purity."

A few days ago, a really nice fellow that I knew from a libertarian chat room, emailed me an article from Lew Rockwell.com entitled "In Defense of Libertarian Purity". Lew Rockwell.com certainly isn't the type of website that I normally visit. In fact, I hate it. In my opinion, most of the articles written at Lew Rockwell are written by idiots. I am not, nor will I ever be a Big L libertarian. I am also not, nor will I ever be anything close to an anarchist. No, I am not an Internet/academic nut job who wants to see all government overthrown, I am a rational libertarian.
. . .
where I differ from these so-called "purists", is that I don't believe bombing people who bombed us first conflicts with libertarianism.
. . .
I live in the reality that our freedom and our liberty was not won on the battlefields of Harvard and Berkley, but at Valley Forge and Yorktown, and not by supreme thinkers, but by fighting men . . .

The obvious point to make is that the U.S. military isn't "bombing the people who bombed us first," but occupying a country that didn't attack the United States, and lacked the means to do so. I understand what Americans were fighting for at Valley Forge and Yorktown, although I assume that the most important issue was independence. I can't really say for sure what Americans are fighting for in Baghdad and Samarra.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

This fellow reminds me of why I had to stop listening to Neal Boortz.

Anonymous said...

I would only disagree mildly.

Our liberty was won by supreme thinkers who were willing to fight and die for their freedom. Had they not been both then the result would have been dramtically different.

Also Iraq didnt attack us. You could make that argument better for Saudi Arabia than Iraq, yet they are our allies.

Anonymous said...

Dude. We're fighting for permanent bases in Iraq. What's so hard to understand?