PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH Message Board

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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH

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To: Neocon who wrote (358204)	2/13/2003 1:08:24 PM
From: Fangorn	Read Replies (1) of 769670

Neo, re >Libertarians I have argued with have denied that there is any "common good" beyond protecting individual rights and maintaining peace and order.< No human would deny there is "common good" beyond protecting individual liberty so I find the above statement unbelievable. A libertarian would argue that the only valid use of government is "protecting individual rights". Talk of "common good" is a bit nebulous and is more properly left to individuals voluntarily working toward that common good. When you use government to force me to help pay for a rec center you have enslaved me to support your "common good". Giving kids a place to go after school is indubitably a common good but does its goodness outweigh the imposed slavery, the limit on liberty that any tax is. Using government force (taxing) to collect funds for national defense derives directly and obviously from "protecting individual rights". Building a rec center is a quite a bit harder to justify as "protecting individual rights". Practically every libertarian I have discussed it with would donate in a second for the rec center but would fight like the devil to stop the government from taxing to build it. Any common good beyond "protecting individual rights and maintaining peace and order" would have to be based on someone's opinion of what is "the common good". I might trust your or GW's opinion on that but there are many whose opinion I would not trust. >The core principle of conservatism? That moral values can be refined, but not superceded, and that we must uphold and defend certain values as being especially conducive to a civilized society......... < This formula could easily be used by a Bin Laden to support his agenda. His idea of what constitutes moral values conducive to a civilized society and what that society would be like are certainly different than yours or mine but I am fairly sure that he is as at least as certain of his correctness as you are of yours. Once you accept that government should do anything beyond "protecting individual rights and maintaining peace and order" you have opened the door to tyranny. Of course "maintaining peace and order" is merely an aspect of "protecting individual liberty" making it redundent. Protecting individual liberty is the root of it all, the only valid justification for using government force, and any use of government is force. Apparently the difference between conservatives and libertarians is that conservatives are willing to use the force of government to do things that cannot be derived directly and obviously from "protecting individual rights" but meet someone's (I ask again who's) idea of what promotes the common good. Thanks for reminding me why I am NOT a coservative.

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