From the article Mona quoted:

"We must use the doctrine of religious liberty to gain independence for Christian schools until we train up a generation of people who know that there is no religious neutrality, no neutral law, no neutral education, and no neutral civil government. Then they will get busy in constructing a Bible-based social, political and religious order which finally denies the religious liberty of the enemies of God."

Would now be an appropriate time to say, "Jesus H. Tap-Dancing Christ?"

No kings,

Robert (post title intended as satire, not declaration of allegiance)

Look, I understand the objection to the idea that there can be such a thing as a limited government. So did the Founders. It is the natural tendency of government to expand, and for politicians and judges to increase their power. The more laws -- and the more Byzantine they are -- the greater advantage to Big Corporations and the Trial Lawyers who can manipulate the system via lobbying, socio-political incestuous relationships, and various ways of well-concealed bribes and back-scratching.

But human beings will always form governments. Even Iceland eventually did. And frankly, the deposit of common law the U.S. inherited from Britain is a good thing, one we retained, and so is the court system, in principle.

If we cannot preserve reasonably limited government after the start we were given, it may be impossible. But there will always be government, and there ought to be. You are far more extreme in your libertarianism than I am, or the folks at Reason or Cato.

(And LMW: I have no objection to funding traffic lights, for god's sake.)

... to alert me when "The Bucky Show" is over? This "all libertarianism, all the time" playlist is getting downright oppressive.

Donning my tin-foil hat, I wonder if this isn't a concerted effort by the "no-government" elitists to leap in and grab some vulnerable converts while public opinion of both Republicans and Democrats is at such a low ebb.

I've been gone all day. I come back and find about a hundred new posts since I left, many of them fiercely debating the gerontology of various age-old political systems. I'm only on page 32 (see Bach's Goldberg Variations) of 42 (see Hitchhiker's Guide) pages of comments, but I wanted to share this before I forgot:

Did you know that this is not only the 50th anniversary of "On the Road" by Kerouac but it is also the 50th anniversary of "Atlas Shrugged" by Ayn Rand. At least I think it is. Does this somehow explain the fevered discussions taking place?

You probably should define the word government, particularly if you are advocating having no government - people are likely to misunderstand you.

The same could probably be said for the terms "conservative" and "liberal" from what has been said here.

Terms are known with different certainties. There are, in any culture, between 3 and 20 colors which are "native" in the sense that they are stand alone (like green, red, blue, purple, black) instead of related to the color of something (like gold, indigo, fire engine red). They are called cognitive colors.

By contrast, English has very few smells that are this way (I can think of only "acrid" right now but there is at least one other).

And some things are defined only for how they appear or what they resemble, or how they feel. When people were giving definitions a while back, they made lists of liberals, wrote or quoted poetry.

I don't know what liberal means in politics except in terms of those things some liberals support, or in opposition to conservative. Conservative literally means resistant to change, but that doesn't seem to convey a whole political philosophy for a complex society.

And, as I said before, Buddha probably would have given the question a noble silence, that having been his response to the big philosophical questions of the day (existence of God and transmigration of souls). From the outside, he was considered anti-Brahminical, and still is, in India (the dalits still convert to Buddhism to opt out of the caste system). The noble silence is usually interpreted by Buddhists as meaning he considered the question irrelevant.

So maybe, although they have other meanings in other contexts, conservative and liberal are the cognitive colors of our political spectrum, in that they can be used exclusively by people who don't want to differentiate, and everybody will argue if you try to define something they know when they see.

And LMW: I have no objection to funding traffic lights, for god's sake.)

I know that. You'll even let the government inspect our food! I love my steaks!

But what about this, eh?

Chris Jay Hoofnagle details the public relations methodology of CATO and other anti-consumer, business-funded organizations:

The Denialists' Deck of Cards: An Illustrated Taxonomy of Rhetoric Used to Frustrate Consumer Protection Efforts

By Chris Jay Hoofnagle

February 9, 2007

"Politics is the shadow cast on society by Big Business."

-- John Dewey

Introduction

It is well known that businesses spend billions of dollars on lobbyists to affect legislation. They also spend untold millions on public policy groups that spread doubt about the need for any type of reform. Chief among these groups are the American Enterprise Institute, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the Manhattan Institute, and the Cato Institute, but many other similar groups exist that focus on specific issues. Giveupblog.com has described these groups as "denialists."[1] Denialists use rhetorical techniques and predictable tactics to erect barriers to debate and consideration of any type of reform, regardless of the facts. He has identified five general tactics used by denialists: "conspiracy, selectivity, the fake expert, impossible expectations, and metaphor."

In my work on consumer protection, I have begun to recognize patterns in denialists' advocacy techniques. Whether the topic is tobacco, food and drug safety, or privacy legislation, these groups employ the same rhetorical devices to delay and stop consumer reform. In this brief article, I build upon Giveupblog.com's definition of denialists and provide a taxonomy of arguments used in denialism. It is illustrated as a deck of playing cards to make it more interesting and to emphasize that denialists are engaged in a predictable game to "do little and delay." Where possible, I have provided a real example of the denialism described in the footnotes. Many of the arguments do not have examples, this is because I have heard many of these arguments in private negotiations, and they are unlikely to appear in print...

http://chrishoofnagle.com/denialism/