No I was not in that post calling for libertarian government.
I used the term liberal, because libertarian would be too extreme for what I'm talking about. Liberal could be confusing itself with its other meanings so I tried to explain it, and I think the explanation is what actually caused the confusion.
My point is that democracy is not the same thing as respect for liberty. And small responsive governments don't necessarily respect liberty. I'd probably like the government to actually go ahead and respect liberty enough, and make liberty a high enough priority that you could call the government libertarian but that isn't what I was calling for. I wasn't specifically calling for a big move in the libertarian direction. I was rather arguing against moves in the opposite direction from the current norm.
I was also saying that living in a small town with reasonably responsible government doesn't mean that tyrannical decisions can't happen. I was responding to your statement -
"As for government creating a "tyranny on the people," at this small, local level government is, definitely, "the people". We can argue a great deal about the relationship between constructs like "the people" and other constructs like "government" at the state and federal level. But at the level of a little NJ boro, them is us."
No "them is not us". Not really. I agree that such a government may be very responsive to citizens concerns, and that's a good thing, but it doesn't make the issues I'm talking about unimportant, or totally irrelevant. It might lower the risk of major problems from the "soft tyranny" of the "nanny state", and it might help eliminate the major problems should they arise, but you where at least implying that there was no possible need to be concerned about such problems from such a local government, and that really isn't true. |
