A question from Politix popped up for me today asking:

Do you wish there were more conservative Democrats and liberal Republicans around?

Here is my response:

I wish there were more radicals, yes radical, not moderate, for individual rights and liberty. When you talk of conservative Democrats or liberal Republicans you are essentially asking for people who believe it is ok to violate your rights, but just a little. This ignores the fact that any violation of rights leads inevitably to further violations of rights, as we have certainly seen in this country.

The relatively small violation of property rights in the Bill of Rights; the fifth amendment, “nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation”; which originally was interpreted for things like government buildings and now means anything the government claims is in the “public interest” such as taking private homes to give the land to developers (the Kelo decision). Or take the first amendment’s absolute prohibition on laws affecting the freedom of speech which has now been reduced to freedom of speech, except if you are talking about politics (campaign finance laws), trade (laws regulating advertising) or if the speech might be offensive to one group or another (hate speech laws).

I wish there were more radicals, yes radical, not moderate, for individual rights and liberty.

I would expand a bit more here and say that what is truly necessary to preserve liberty is a government composed of people whose first question when confronted with a policy question is not “Will this help some people?” or “Will this be popular with the voters?”, which seems to be the case today, but rather “Is this something that can be done without violating the rights of any citizens and furthers the government’s responsibility to protect those rights?”

As long as it is the former questions that dominate government thinking, it is merely a question of whose rights are being violated to favor whom (e.g. the poor, crony businesses, foreign countries) or what (e.g. the spotted owl, the salmon, the air, the environment). In the end, such a system results in everyone being sacrificed to everyone which is hardly a recipe for liberty and success, whether as individuals or as a society (the some of those individuals).