Let us be honest. I’m only a 93% Libertarian and roughly a 90% patriot. That’s why I curse our Alabama Legislature’s proposal to mount cameras at traffic intersections, but view with calm equanimity the wiretapping of suspects or even suspected suspects who’d like to blow up New York City; or poison Chicago’s water supply or otherwise harm me or my countrymen.
A democracy only works if you vote your self-interest and I have no murderous plans. So I’m not worried about a few flawed interrogations of terrorist candidates or kinsmen. It’s a great tradeoff: a small price for a humane society to pay for a major life-saving bonus.
Those darn cameras on the other hand are as intrusive as pollen in springtime and pay off in pennies. Some impatient citizen (like me) busts the red light and is hit with a hundred dollar fine. Many a late-nite, maybe midnite – I’ve sat at the lighted but empty intersection, expending energy, polluting our environment. Fuming, you might say. And once, maybe twice I gunned through the red. I’m not only confessing but writing my state representative to vent my outrage at his camera concept.
And since I am a 93% (maybe 98%) Libertarian, I’ll tell him if he replaced the state-decreed light with a traffic circle, we’d get the state out of our commuting life and traffic would flow like beer at my corner tavern.
{ 18 comments }
Ted,
The problem is that any government powerful enough to perform “wiretapping of suspects or even suspected suspects”, is also powerful enough to do the things you don’t like, such as video surveillance cameras.
This kind of thinking is what got us to where we are. Everyone has their own list of things they would like government to do for them.
When you take the unified set of everyone’s wish lists, you wind up in our current situation. Every day someone adds another idea for the use of State power. So the State grows and grows.
The solution: we have to stop asking government to do things, not only the things we don’t like, but also the things we do. Only then can we reduce government. But it is not easy.
“I’m only a 93% Libertarian ”
And so says everyone ‘working’ in government.
Ted, is this meant to be satire? I hope so, else I never thought I’d see such anti-libertarian thought on this site. 93%? How about 26%?
Yea, really, is this satire? I hope to god it is.
I have reason to suspect you for something or other.
Please come up to Vancouver so I can take appropriate action.
Seems like a satire to me…
I’m only a 93% Libertarian
The man who only beats his wife once a month is still a wife-beater…. The Most Crucial Gap in Politics
***When you take the unified set of everyone’s wish lists, you wind up in our current situation. Every day someone adds another idea for the use of State power. So the State grows and grows.***
That pretty much somes up just about every long winded post I’ve ever made on the internet in three sentences.
It’s getting it across to each individual within the masses (a quixotic task). Many libertarians decry politicians and bureaucrats, and rightly so, but at the base is an electorate motivated by their (clinical) superstitions to set things aright. Don’t blame the leaders solely when the vast majority choose to be led. Public policy is the product of individuals’ cross purposed desires.
Circles! I agree that circles (rotaries in New England, roundabouts in places where the Queen’s English is spoken) need to be much more common, with one caveat: traffic IN the circle must have right-of-way.
We still have a few circles here in southern New Jersey. I go through a tiny one (beautifully decorated with flowers) twice daily as I commute into and out of Haddonfield. But the legislature in NJ has never gotten the law right (yes, I know; you are all surprised!) with regard to circles. Circles only work if the traffic IN the circle always has right-of-way. And the laws in New Jersey do not reflect the obvious fact that, for the circles to work properly, people need to be able to EXIT THEM, which is only possible if they always have the right-of-way. The result of the idiotic laws that now stand produce gridlock (circlelock?) because people already in the circles are forced to yield to people coming into the circles, thus jamming things up, and no one goes anywhere. Insane!
Now, the fine people in Barbados have it right (though the traffic is on the wrong side of the street, and goes clockwise around the roundabouts). What they have right is the right-of-way. At each entrance to the three circles on Route 1, they have “yield” signs to the vehicles (mokes for us visitors), gently but firmly laying down the law: give way!
As for the cameras, be careful what you wish for. In the libertarian way of thinking, the proper owner of the intersection, should it ever be liberated from the government, might have much stricter rules about its use that any half-arsed government ever was. Libertarianism doesn’t equate to doing your own thing: it means following the rightful owners rules.
Brad said ‘Don’t blame the leaders solely when the vast majority choose to be led. Public policy is the product of individuals’ cross purposed desires’.
quite: this is actually the core of the fraud inherent in all ‘democracy’: IN principle, a government that is elected by the majority will keep th emajority happy and when it doesn’t, it is voted out. But that doesn’t happen. Governments that get elected on a popular mandate ( with majority support) then get to make decisions and do things that said majority do NOT approve of, even when that was declared before the election. By aggregating many individual candidates into ‘parties’ which have a grab-bag of miscellaneous ‘policies’, each voter will tend to choose based on the parties’ positions on policies he feels most strongly about. SO he votes for a party that he agrees with most strongly about some issues, but in so doing he must accept that that party also has other policies that he opposes, albeit weakly.
the government that gets in thus is able to implement all sorts of things that nobody likes, because the voters dont DISlike it strongly enough. And as individual priorities shift, allegiances might shift, but there is ALWAYS a raft of unpopular-but-reluctantly-accepted decisions awaiting the rubber stamp.
I saw a cartoon this morning in which the anti-hero said: ‘I dont bother to vote anymore. No matter what I do, the government always gets in’.
Now, the fine people in Barbados have it right (though the traffic is on the wrong side of the street, and goes clockwise around the roundabouts).
With proper design, traffic can go either way around the roundabout! As with the “magic roundabout” at Hemel Hempstead, outside London.
Thanks, Peter! I had never heard of the Magic Roundabout at Hemel Hempstead. Brilliant design!
Would I give up voting power that only gets me people who may (and often do not) act in my interests for a vote that is almost certain to get a person to act in my interest?
Well it’s about time cars were fined for breaking the law. Jaywalkers get fined but never cars.
We’ll I don’t have a problem with you busting the red light when there’s no one around. I do have a problem with you doing it when pedestrians are crossing the street on their green light. It is safer to jaywalk than to cross the street legally thanks to impatient drivers.
My libertarian solution is to legalize the shooting of all drivers who drive through red lights or queue across intersections and pedestrian crossings. If no one is around you won’t get shot. If you queue across the intersection and then try to plough through or reverse all the way back into pedestrians you will quickly learn not to do it.
Steve, yes, you’re right. But the reason I give myself only a 93% score is that I don’t believe ANY govt programs (including my favorites) are effectively managed and implemented. They could ALL run smoother, cheaper, more equitably if privately managed. BUT, I do believe in the historical uniqueness of America – and I’m a little more permissive towards our govt in its efforts to defend the US of A. Call it my libertarian achilles heel. regards, have a good day. Enjoyed our
exchange
Readers, Yes, there was some satire intended in my observation on cameras at traffic intersections. However I did want to say that those nosy cameras and wiretapping have much in common. And nobody complains about the cameras.
Eavesdropping (or interrogation) UNDER THE LAW does not bother me so much as it does my fellow Libertarians. Perhaps, given the bio/nuclear threat, I have a darker view of the danger to us: and recall that we have yet to see a war wherein unfortunately, personal liberty didn’t suffer.
Wonder how bereaved victims of 9/11 feel about this issue?
It’s a complicated one since we are in a a non-traditional war that sneers at traditional rules.
Thanks for your comments – most of you have made constructive points. Life is a trade-off you know. regards, ted PS, I don’t think its so bad to be a 93% libertarian.
Ted,
“And nobody complains about the cameras.”
I suggest you labor under this delusion, no doubt, due to your lack of intellectual rigor.
A simple search : http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Stop+light+cameras
divulges, plainly, sufficient instances for one to see the current state.
That you choose appeals to pity (9/11 victims), and platitudes from Central Casting (…we are in a non-traditional war…) as glittery garb to hide the body of your pragmatism is base, though, from a similiar vein.
Charles Hanes, in his opening comment, states plainly the facts of the matter.
To you, again, Why the pretense? If you’re a Statist, be Free, and say so…
When reading this entry, I was just thinking about how it is refreshing to see a perspective expressed here from a non-’purist’-type libertarian. As someone who is a traditionalist conservative and a constitutionalist, I find myself agreeing with must posted here (and at LRC), but in disappointed disagreement with some of the other sentiments that keep recurring. So it’s refreshing, once in awhile (or maybe once period… I don’t recall when the last time was), to see entries like this.
The thought never entered my mind that this entry might be satire (as some of the commenters have inquired about, above).
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