Democrats more libertarian than Republicans?

[CNHT]

Here is what I got from that.  2 members of the house really do support small government (based off the bills used) and they are both members of the GOP.  Around 8 others pretty much support it and they tend to be GOP members but not all of them are.  Th GOP has a lot of people that support small government on a few economic issues.  The DNC has lots of people that support small government on a few personal issues.  Overall, the vast majority of people in the house are big supports of big government.

No suprises for me.  It still makes more sense for a liberty lover to work within the GOP than the DNC (if they have to work within a major party).

Keith for a very young person, one of the youngest in the movement that I've met, (and now one of my favorites) I laud you for recognizing and accepting reality...

[CNHT]

The Republicans pissed me off and convinced me to leave because their politicians in power won't stand up for what they (presumably) believe, but the Democrats are a truly conformist, collectivist party. They are the borg.

So true. But take heart that people at the local level calling themselvevs R's are not the same as the figureheads because they are free to stick to the platform, which is supposed to be more 'republic-like' and about less government.

[FrankChodorov]

The NHLA index does not lie. 99% of those who scored an A as good 'libertarians' are listed as R's...

the point is that it depends on the questions you ask or the votes on bills that you analyze...

Republicanism in NH seems to have a much bigger tent than the Democrats

the term "republicanism" has a definite historical meaning as opposed to classical liberalism (which is what libertarians falsely claim to be)...

there are two fundamentally different historical views deeply woven into the american experiment in self-governance of what liberty actually meant and how it was to be attained and acted upon...

1. Lockean classical liberalism - based on a biological view of the differentiated, rational, atomistic individual excercising their free will and who then freely participates in a legal framework of contracts and rights.

to have a free will for the classical liberal does not require cultivation, training, education, etc. but rather, the will is free in a voluntaristic manner, meaning that the freedom or spontaneity of the will is a biologically given capacity.

if the will is in its essence unencumbered, it must be the case that the free will constitutes the institutions and structures of society rather then the other way around.

thus, when one shapes the institutions of any society, one should have as one's main goal the protection of the individual's ability to exercise themselves freely.

in the political sphere this means enacting a set of rights that protect the individual from political tyranny, while in the economic sphere this means elaborating neutral contract and commercial law...vis-a-vis agents in both spheres, the state should be neutral, safeguarding the individuals ability to operate freely within the constraints of the law.

2. civic republicanism/humanism (more akin to traditionalism) - does not have as its highest value the exercise of the individual will...but rather, it thinks of freedom as Aristotle and Machiavelli did , namely, as the ability for agents to determine themselves though the exercise of political (& economic) power within human scale, face-to-face, deliberative, participatory, democratic "civic" institutions (democracy doesn't scale!).

instead of holding freedom to be the unhindered exercise of our individual capacities?a type of freedom that does not require acting in the political sphere at all?it sees freedom as that which can only be gained through the political.

this was completely corrupted by the Madisonian "division of power" which tried to scale a democratic constitutional republic across a vast land (made larger yet by the Loiusiana purchase) -- both horizontally via executive, judicial, and legislative branches and vertically via federalism at the local, state, and national levels -- in replacing Jefferson's populist agrarian "state's rights" vision of the articles of confederation (remember Jefferson was in France during the constitutional convention in Philadelphia).

thus, civic republicanism sees freedom as something that requires cultivation and education rather than as something merely given...freedom is an achievement that is arrived at through self-governance.
self-government, however, requires public virtue, i. e, the inculcated habits and practices that allow one to participate in public deliberation.

the `Jeffersonian persuasion' is based on the civic republican idea that certain economics and social conditions are inimical to the possibility of self-government...this persuasion takes the landed yeoman farmer to be best suited for the role of citizen (remember Shay's rebellion??).

for the Jeffersonian agrarian vision, land (i.e., space) was the element that would forestall the temporal corruption to which all republics are eventually subject...this is why the Louisiana purchase was the central event of Jefferson's administration: it kept alive the possibility for a civic republican form of life even though it was essentially killed by the Madisonian design and the Hamiltonian constitutional coup!

on the whole, civic republicanism had not been critical of the market economy per se, but only of its distortions, the prime one being the wage system instituted by industrialization/capitalism..the problem with this system is simple: it relegates whole segments of the population to wage slavery, a condition that is not consonant with the exercise of self-government.

why?

because the wage system creates entrenched hierarchies that are reproduced institutionally and within the self-understanding of citizens through feelings of inferiority, resentment and shame...such entrenched hierarchy is not consonant with civic freedom because each agent in a republic must at least be able to participate in collective deliberation and self-determination - each individual agent must recognize and be recognized by the other as equally fit to determine the collectivity.

thus, a certain notion of equality it built into civic republicanism.

[Follow]

Frank's problem is, he is always trying to 'sell' you something

Snake Oil. 




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[Fluff and Stuff]

the term "republicanism" has a definite historical meaning as opposed to classical liberalism (which is what libertarians falsely claim to be)...

Republicanism = belief in the republican form of government?

[FrankChodorov]

the term "republicanism" has a definite historical meaning as opposed to classical liberalism (which is what libertarians falsely claim to be)...

Republicanism = belief in the republican form of government?

that individual freedom could only be attained by practicing virtuous behavior within small-scale, deliberative, civic institutions.

[Ron Helwig]

Republicanism = belief in the republican form of government?

Correct. The people who hated the republican government split off of one of the major parties and named themselves after that which they hated most: thus was born the Republican Party.
It didn't take them long to destroy the republican form of government and replace it with their desire, nationalism.

Of course if they had named themselves after what they really wanted, they wouldn't have won. Maybe that's what's wrong with the Libertarian Party 

[scheck]

A quote in yesterday's paper


?Republicans campaign like Libertarians and govern like Democrats.?
HARRY BROWNE

[Dreepa]

but the Democrats are a truly conformist, collectivist party. They are the borg.

nice quote.