Footnote du Jour
Posted by Richard Adams
From a post by Megan McArdle on libertarians and the GOP. On abortion: "The belief that there is an explictly libertarian position is held, as far as I can tell, almost entirely among liberals furious at pro-lifers. Persons have a right to be protected against the initiation of force, and libertarianism has no basic principles that answer the question of when personhood begins."
5:55 PM / November 11, 2008
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I was unaware that any political party had the ability to answer that question.
You don't need any actual ability to try and convince people you have the answer.
What some libertarians don't understand is that the powerful socialism of the family is a precondition for free markets and free political institutions. When the family breaks down, people turn to the nanny state because most cannot tolerate the insecurity of living as autonomous individuals in a free economy. They will readily exchange their freedom in the marketplace in production and consumption and their civil rights in a free state for sexual license in the cocoon of government-provided economic security.
"the powerful socialism of the family" depends on women's complicity in the provision of unpaid labor for the young, the infirm, and the elderly, something that the autonomous [male] individuals in a free economy are too quick to assume and loathe to value monetarily. What appears as a loss of autonomy on the Right looks a lot like gains in recognition and autonomy on the Left, and seems to many an eminently reasonable and intelligent exchange.