I realize that conservatives and liberals are convinced that they are different from one another. I also understand that the mainstream media is convinced of the same thing.
For the life of me, as a libertarian I can’t see any difference between conservatives and liberals or Republicans and Democrats, at least not with respect to philosophy, principles, and programs.
Oh sure, conservatives favor health savings accounts while liberals favor Obamacare, but they both believe in the concept of government-guaranteed healthcare, as evidenced by their joint commitment to Medicare and Medicaid.
The same holds true for education. Conservatives favor school vouchers and liberals don’t. Big deal. They both believe in public (i.e., government) schooling.
Or Social Security. Conservatives favor raising the retirement age while liberals oppose it. Big deal. They both believe that government should be taking care of seniors with tax-funded largess.
Indeed, let’s just list some of the things that both conservatives and liberals agree on:
- Social Security.
- Medicare.
- Medicaid.
- Public schooling.
- Immigration controls.
- Trade restrictions.
- Drug laws.
- Economic regulations.
- Minimum-wage laws.
- Gun-control restrictions.
- Licensure laws.
- Zoning laws.
- The military-industrial complex.
- The Pentagon.
- The CIA.
- The NSA.
- The FBI.
- The IRS.
- The Federal Reserve.
- Fiat (i.e., paper) currency.
- Foreign interventionism.
- Foreign aid.
- Foreign military bases.
- Foreign alliances.
- Foreign wars.
- Military tribunals.
- Torture.
- The war on terrorism.
- Denial of due process.
- Mass secret surveillance.
- Departments of Education, Commerce, Labor, Agriculture, and many others.
- Amtrak.
- The Postal Service.
- Farm subsidies.
- Stimulus spending.
- The welfare state.
- The national-security state.
In other words, both conservatives and liberals favor an omnipotent welfare-warfare state — that is, a governmental structure whose primary purpose is to tax people in order (1) to provide people with welfare largess and (2) to keep them “safe” from scary monsters around the world, many of which are produced by the warfare state itself.
We libertarians, on the hand, oppose all of those things listed above. Unlike conservatives and liberals, we favor liberty, free markets, and a limited-government republic, which not only provide people with economic prosperity and high standards of living but also nurture such values as self-reliance, independence, conscience, courage, and voluntary charity.
The post What’s the Difference Between Conservatives and Liberals? appeared first on The Future of Freedom Foundation.
The Future of Freedom Foundation was founded in 1989 by FFF president Jacob Hornberger with the aim of establishing an educational foundation that would advance an uncompromising case for libertarianism in the context of both foreign and domestic policy. The mission of The Future of Freedom Foundation is to advance freedom by providing an uncompromising moral and economic case for individual liberty, free markets, private property, and limited government. Visit https://www.fff.org