Actually, I find being against urestricted abortion (a phrase that lacks the overtones of either anti-choice or pro-life) hard for a libertarian to justify.
And I think the death penalty is very much in line with libertarian principles IF you are assuming the existence of a pure libertarian government.
Choice is, IMO, the key to libertarianism WHERE IT DOES NOT IMPACT THE RIGHTS OF ANOTHER PERSON. But if you kill somebody else, you have made a choice to impact their right to life. IMO, that constitues making a choice to accept death by the state. Essential to libertarianism, IMO, is the belief that choices have consequences; that the right to make choices entails the obligation to accept their consequences.
As long as the rules are reasonably clear and reasonably evenhandedly enforced, I think even a libertarian society is entitled, if not obligated, to say that making certain choices delibertely to deprive someone else of life without justification, or deliberately to expose your neighbors to serious harm from an enemy, constitutes making a choice to have the society end your own right to life.
There is nothing un-libertarian about this, IMO. |
