According to a YouTube video, the great conservative Republican
President Ronald Reagan wouldn't pass the conservative GOP's
proposed litmus test. But then, President Kennedy wouldn't pass any
liberal litmus test today either. (screenshot from YouTube video)
Some members of the Republican National Committee want a conservative-only party and won't fund any candidate who fails their purity litmus test.
Here's the purity test (8 out of 10 is passing) as it appeared recently in the Los Angeles Times, followed by some libertarian observations, many of which will fail the purity litmus test of other libertarians.
1. Smaller government, smaller national debt, lower deficits and lower taxes by opposing bills like Obama’s “stimulus” bill.
Great words, but when was the last time government got smaller under Republican rule? Never?
2. Market-based healthcare reform and oppose Obama-style government-run healthcare.
And would that include abolishing the Health Department and the FDA and the VA hospital system so that a truly market-based system could innovate its way into delivering medical care to everyone at every economic level?
3. Market-based energy reforms by opposing cap-and-trade legislation.
Including abolishing the Energy department and all those Green laws against drilling for oil wherever it's found, since there is no shortage of oil, only a shortage of politically correct oil?
4. Workers’ right to secret ballot by opposing "card check."
Great! Then abolish all the Roosevelt-era laws that politicized unions and let owners and employers learn how to work things out on their own. A big help would be to abolish the income tax and the withholding system that goes with it so employees can become self-employed freelance contractors wherever possible, meaning that they'll receive fat paychecks with zero deductions that they can then apply toward their own tailored market-based health insurance, life insurance, vacations, holidays, etc., as each sees fit.
5. Legal immigration and assimilation into American society by opposing amnesty for illegal immigrants.
Or, privatize everything privatizable and recognize that everyone can go wherever they please as long as they don't trespass.
6. Victory in Iraq and Afghanistan by supporting military-recommended troop surges.
How about one giant troop surge out of all those 130+ countries where we have troops stationed? Libertarian foreign policy is not "isolationist" but "noninterventionist." People should learn the difference before arguing about it.
7. Containment of Iran and North Korea, particularly effective action to eliminate their nuclear weapons threat.
These are problems America's hubris-laden world-strutting interventionist "leaders" got us into and rational people are stuck with finding a way out of. America's government is specifically tasked with defending us, not the world, so for now maybe we point every nuke we have at them and negotiate like mad. Worked during the Cold War, right?
8. Retention of the Defense of Marriage Act.
Keep government out of it. Marriage is personal, not political, and is best served by civil institutions that allow free people to freely define their own relationships.
9. Protecting the lives of vulnerable persons by opposing healthcare rationing and denial of healthcare and government funding of abortion.
This calls for complete separation of government and healthcare, which includes denying government any power to do anything concerning abortion.
10. The right to keep and bear arms by opposing government restrictions on gun ownership.
Libertarians can agree with this one if it means recognizing the right of every sovereign individual to use guns in any non-coercive manner whatsoever without begging some bureaucrat for a permission slip.
Have fun applying your purity litmus test to these responses, libertarians.
(video from YouTube)
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Comments
Being the perfect libertarian that I am ;) I can only find fault with #7. Besides all the problems with allowing the demonstrably insane and/or evil individuals of the government (*any* government) to have weapons of any sort, I ask "why negotiate?" If I catch an intruder in my house and I'm holding a shotgun at his chest, there really is no negotiation, on my part, necessary.
But Kent, my point in #7 is what if those countries are NOT threatening us but we have reason to believe that they have the means and a clear likelihood of attacking us? We point our bigger badder guns at them before they get into our house and we "negotiate" (diplomatic word for "clearly explain with lurid details") the suicidal consequences for them if they attack us. Doing nothing is isolationism; preemptively attacking them is interventionism. Being the biggest baddest dog on the block might be the most effective libertarian means of forestalling any war at all.
AGREED--The problem with the litmus test. It allows negotiating. That is how you lose your constitution or libertarian freedoms. My rights are only mine to give up and I choose not to give. It is always a we, us, them,(plural) and not an I, me or you(singular=individual freedom).
One quibble: the 130+ countries we have troops in? In most of those countries, the troops are just a few guards at the U.S. embassy. I find that completely innocuous.
But I agree with the main points Garry makes.
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