From: Bill Stewart <stewarts@ix.netcom.com>
Date: Sat, 13 Sep 1997 16:13:18 +0800
To: Jim Choate <cypherpunks@ssz.com (Cypherpunks Distributed Remailer)
Subject: Re: In Defense of Libertarianism, from HotWired's Synapse (fwd)
In-Reply-To: <199709130004.TAA23630@einstein.ssz.com>
Message-ID: <3.0.3.32.19970913005041.0069adf8@popd.ix.netcom.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



There's presumably some far more appropriate place for this,
but it's _your_ cypherpunks listserver :-)

At 07:04 PM 9/12/97 -0500, Jim Choate  <ravage@ssz.com> wrote:
>If the Libertarians are so gung-ho on avoiding governmental (especialy
>federal) intervention in their lives why do they support the 14th Amendment?

Libertarians are generally very strong in insisting that the governments
should respect the rights of their citizens, and as the 14th forces the
Bill of Rights on the states, it adds some value.  There's by no means
agreement that the 14th is good, or that the States are or are not
better at things than the Feds (it's pretty much agreed that it's
easier for the States to do Bad Things, but that it's less dangerous when
they do it than when the Feds do, since it's easier to leave a State.)
Heck, many of us think that Lincoln was wrong in reconquering the South,
though many of us also think that they seceeded for bad motives.

>Why do they further not ask why the 9th and 10th are not fully respected and
>used by both the legislative and judicial branches of the federal
>government?

You haven't heard Libs rant for the 9th and 10th?  You've obviously been
tuning out :-)  Must not have the patience ....

>clear that the founding fathers wanted the situation in the several states
>to be quite dynamic and diverse, otherwise why "Congress shall make no
>law..." and not something more comprehensive preventing the states from such
>laws as well?

It's extremely clear that the Founding Finaglers had widely diverse opinions,
some of which wanted central control and fiat currencies, others rabidly
decentralist.  Go read the Anti-Federalist Papers.  And then, of course,
go read the Federalist papers, and realize these were the more
pro-big-government
side of the bunch that overthrew their previous government.