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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: D. Long who wrote (9148)	9/24/2003 3:46:29 AM
From: Dayuhan	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 793755

The divergence is after the agreed principle that government should maximize liberty. The disagreement is whether that is a positive, or negative, obligation. The left libertarians argue that it is a positive obligation to provide, the "right" libertarians (which include some of the anarchists) argue that it is a negative obligation to abstain from interference. I don't think it's possible for the government to "provide liberty". Protect liberty, yes, if it's very very careful not to trample it it the process of defending it. The problem with government abstention is that government is not the only entity able to intrude on liberty. I would say that the single most important function of government is to act as referee in cases where one person's liberties clash with another's. The key distinction in this discussion, to me, is among liberties (things we are allowed to do), protections (things others aren't allowed to do to us) and entitlements (things others are required to do for us). There's a whole lot of confusion among those, in a lot of circles. I'm still not sure what pigeonhole this drops me into. I don't really care, either. It pretty clearly depends on who I ask.