(December 16, 2014 at 8:39 am)Tonus Wrote:(December 16, 2014 at 7:47 am)Nope Wrote: I have met libertarians who are pro-choice and pro-same sex marriage. They hold right wing views on everything else but believe that adults should be able to do what they want with their own bodies. Some of them are also open borders but their view on the borders has nothing to do with their love for their fellow man. They believe that business would somehow do better if people could freely and easily move from one place to the other.Libertarians in the USA strike me as an attempt by the GOP to expand without alienating an important core constituency (the religious right). They're really just Republicans who take a slightly more liberal stand on social issues... sometimes. I think that the GOP is understandably concerned with getting them back into the fold, since a split could be devastating for them in future elections. An honest-to-goodness libertarian party would be more liberal than conservative, IMO. Therefore, if the migration goes in that direction (ie, GOP towards libertarianism) it's probably better for the country in the long run.
Libertarianism has a long history in this country. I was a registered Libertarian for about two decades, and still have strong leanings towards it. I stopped registering as such around 2002, because I came to understand that some elements of social harmony and weal require a little more activism on the part of the government.
I have never voted Republican in my life at the Presidential level, and particularly after Dubya's misrule, I never will. That was when many libertarians left the vote-Republican fold, precisely because they saw that the Republican extolling of the virtues of small government was a dog & pony show. After shit like the Patriot Act, as well as the continued, dogged resistance to gay rights, it was made clear to many libertarians that the Republicans wanted just as big a government as Democrats. The latter want into your wallet, the former want into your bedroom.
