Let’s Make Something Clear
I realize that the news today will be all about the Virginia Tech shooting. And gun laws. And so forth. But, I think it is valuable, given much of the recent conversation (past 3 months, give or take), to put a stake in the ground on what The Liberty Papers stands for around the war in Iraq, Islamo-Fascism and how to best defend our country.
Let’s start with this statement. We are individuals. We do not require that any contributor adhere to some specific position on anything. The contributors hold a wide range of individual beliefs. From near Anarcho-Capitalist, like Brad and myself, to Minarchists, like Mike and Chris. We also have a fairly divergent range of beliefs on the war in Iraq. Doug is probably the most vocal supporter of ending the war now and Chris the most vocal win the war proponent.
That said, we do have some areas where we all agree.
First, about Iraq. Not one of us would leave our military “in the lurch”, we do not agree with the Democrats approach. Whether we want to withdraw and leave Iraq to deal with its issues on their own, or we want to stay and try to help them through. Every one of us began this saga as supporters of the war in 2003. Most of us still are. I think every one of us would also agree that the Bush Administration has done a bad job of prosecuting this war, both militarily and politically.
Islamo-Fascism. A threat to freedom and liberty, the anti-thesis of everything we believe in. We diverge in how best to deal with the problem. Personally, I say we get rid of our dependence on oil as quickly as possible and leave ’em to rot in the sand.
How best to defend ourselves against enemies that use terrorism as a tactic. Here we are in strong agreement that giving up liberty to gain false security is the worst possible choice. We all agree that government never gives back power once gained. Government never uses that power for just the narrow purpose defined. And, even if we did think some loss of liberty was necessary, Bush has not shown that he is a wise custodian of such power.
We have clashed with people that some classify as “left libertarians” quite often. Libertarian Party types generally consider us to not be Libertarians. And we agree. Why? Because we disagree with the non initiation of force principle, we disagree, generally, with the isolationist position they take. For the first time that I can recall, we are actually accused of being Libertarians in the Lew Rockwell tradition. We, in fact, are not.