Making the Broad Case for Liberty
Posted by CircuitGuy 1 year, 7 months ago to Government
I liked this interview with Justin Amash because Amash has a positive attitude and says politicians can win with classically liberal ideas. I am not sure how often this is true, but I hope it’s true. Here is a quote from the 26-minute interview:
The mistake [libertarians] make frequently is presenting themselves as some kind of victims like: We’re a small minority, and nobody agrees with us, and isn’t it terrible. Everyone’s a statist. We’re all on our own and we have to move to one particular part of the country and wall ourselves off.
The truth is American was founded with very libertarian principles. Now they didn’t follow those principles from the very beginning. They put things down on paper they didn’t believe in. There were horrible atrocities in this country, things like slavery. But the principles they wrote down were good and true principles. Within our culture we have a set of principles that are widely believed. I don’t think Americans appreciate enough how similar a lot of these basic principles we have are compared to people who have grown up in other countries and lived there for a long time who don’t have those same views. It’s ingrained in us. A lot of classical liberal ideas are really ingrained in the American system.
The mistake [libertarians] make frequently is presenting themselves as some kind of victims like: We’re a small minority, and nobody agrees with us, and isn’t it terrible. Everyone’s a statist. We’re all on our own and we have to move to one particular part of the country and wall ourselves off.
The truth is American was founded with very libertarian principles. Now they didn’t follow those principles from the very beginning. They put things down on paper they didn’t believe in. There were horrible atrocities in this country, things like slavery. But the principles they wrote down were good and true principles. Within our culture we have a set of principles that are widely believed. I don’t think Americans appreciate enough how similar a lot of these basic principles we have are compared to people who have grown up in other countries and lived there for a long time who don’t have those same views. It’s ingrained in us. A lot of classical liberal ideas are really ingrained in the American system.
liberty REQUIRES the flip side of the coin called RESPONSIBILITY
Following this metaphor, when did liberty start? If liberty, in this context, had a headstone, what would the dates on it be?