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While Rand Paul is not a libertarian (this is a concept promoted by the media to make him seem radical), your understanding of abortion issues is quite off. The

While Rand Paul is not a libertarian (this is a concept promoted by the media to make him seem radical), your understanding of abortion issues is quite off. The real debate about abortion is over when life that deserves protecting begins. There is nothing else anyone disagrees with. If the fetus was an animal PETA would be the only ones having issue; if the fetus was dead noone would have issue with removing it. Some people believe that because a baby is not yet outside its mother, it has no rights. Other believe that until a baby is named, it has no rights. That is what the issue is about, and thinking otherwise you might as well not engage because you will go in circles all day. As far as same-sex marriage, Rand Paul thinks it is not the federal government's responsibility to regulate that. Removing regulation over social issues from government IS a very libertarian philosophy.

morgante 11y ago
I don't think Rand Paul is a libertarian (I was simply responding to the parent). As for abortion, even if you consider the fetus a "person," I don't see how a libertarian would make a good case for the government to force the mother to continue to sustain and provide for it. > Removing regulation over social issues from government IS a very libertarian philosophy. Delegating to the states is very different from removing the regulation. The libertarian thing to do would be to ban such regulation.
- natmaster 11y ago
  > I don't see how a libertarian would make a good case for the government to force the mother to continue to sustain and provide for it. So all neglect laws should be removed? > The libertarian thing to do would be to ban such regulation. That requires a constitutional amendment. Those are not easy to get passed.
  - morgante 11y ago
    > So all neglect laws should be removed? I am not a libertarian, so I wouldn't. But several libertarians I know have said we so, and also argue that there should be no duty to feed the poor, etc. > The libertarian thing to do would be to ban such regulation. That requires a constitutional amendment. Those are not easy to get passed. That depends on what regulation we want passed. The First Amendment already includes some pretty important limits on the power of government (included limits which Paul seems loathe to enforce).
    - natmaster 11y ago
      "several libertarians I know have said we so" This is a first for me to hear, though it's important to note libertarians are individuals too, and have their own ideas! I have not found any libertarians promoting children as full-class citizens; so this is very new to hear this. Suffice it to say, I don't think that viewpoint is common. "First Amendment ..." to the constitution. Are you just agreeing with me here?
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - tzs 11y ago
    > So all neglect laws should be removed? That was the position of Murray Rothbard [1], who was one of the major intellectual founders of modern libertarianism, particularly anarcho-capitalism. He was a founder of the Ludwig von Mises Institute. Most internet libertarians seem to be followers of his school of libertarianism (although they often do not know it...). His book "The Ethics of Liberty" covers children in chapter 14. You can find the PDF online. There's a big chunk of chapter 14 here [2]. Here's the most relevant part: Even from birth, the parental ownership is not absolute but of a "trustee" or guardianship kind. In short, every baby as soon as it is born and is therefore no longer contained within his mother's body possesses the right of self-ownership by virtue of being a separate entity and a potential adult. It must therefore be illegal and a violation of the child's rights for a parent to aggress against his person by mutilating, torturing, murdering him, etc. On the other hand, the very concept of "rights" is a "negative" one, demarcating the areas of a person's action that no man may properly interfere with. No man can therefore have a "right" to compel someone to do a positive act, for in that case the compulsion violates the right of person or property of the individual being coerced. Thus, we may say that a man has a right to his property (i.e., a right not to have his property invaded), but we cannot say that anyone has a "right" to a "living wage," for that would mean that someone would be coerced into providing him with such a wage, and that would violate the property rights of the people being coerced. As a corollary this means that, in the free society, no man may be saddled with the legal obligation to do anything for another, since that would invade the former's rights; the only legal obligation one man has to another is to respect the other man's rights. Applying our theory to parents and children, this means that a parent does not have the right to aggress against his children, but also that the parent should not have a legal obligation to feed, clothe, or educate his children, since such obligations would entail positive acts coerced upon the parent and depriving the parent of his rights. The parent therefore may not murder or mutilate his child, and the law properly outlaws a parent from doing so. But the parent should have the legal right not to feed the child, i.e., to allow it to die. The law, therefore, may not properly compel the parent to feed a child or to keep it alive. (Again, whether or not a parent has a moral rather than a legally enforceable obligation to keep his child alive is a completely separate question.) This rule allows us to solve such vexing questions as: should a parent have the right to allow a deformed baby to die (e.g., by not feeding it)? The answer is of course yes, following a fortiori from the larger right to allow any baby, whether deformed or not, to die. (Though, as we shall see below, in a libertarian society the existence of a free baby market will bring such "neglect" down to a minimum.) [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murray_Rothbard http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murray_Rothbard [2] http://mises.org/library/children-and-rights http://mises.org/library/children-and-rights
  - sukilot 11y ago
    The fact that mothers give birth to babies,not to fully formed and educated adults, is a major unsolved problem of Libertarian and Objectivist (and part of Conservative) philosophy.

morgante 11y ago

I don't think Rand Paul is a libertarian (I was simply responding to the parent). As for abortion, even if you consider the fetus a "person," I don't see how a libertarian would make a good case for the government to force the mother to continue to sustain and provide for it. > Removing regulation over social issues from government IS a very libertarian philosophy. Delegating to the states is very different from removing the regulation. The libertarian thing to do would be to ban such regulation.

natmaster 11y ago
> I don't see how a libertarian would make a good case for the government to force the mother to continue to sustain and provide for it. So all neglect laws should be removed? > The libertarian thing to do would be to ban such regulation. That requires a constitutional amendment. Those are not easy to get passed.
- morgante 11y ago
  > So all neglect laws should be removed? I am not a libertarian, so I wouldn't. But several libertarians I know have said we so, and also argue that there should be no duty to feed the poor, etc. > The libertarian thing to do would be to ban such regulation. That requires a constitutional amendment. Those are not easy to get passed. That depends on what regulation we want passed. The First Amendment already includes some pretty important limits on the power of government (included limits which Paul seems loathe to enforce).
  - natmaster 11y ago
    "several libertarians I know have said we so" This is a first for me to hear, though it's important to note libertarians are individuals too, and have their own ideas! I have not found any libertarians promoting children as full-class citizens; so this is very new to hear this. Suffice it to say, I don't think that viewpoint is common. "First Amendment ..." to the constitution. Are you just agreeing with me here?
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- tzs 11y ago
  > So all neglect laws should be removed? That was the position of Murray Rothbard [1], who was one of the major intellectual founders of modern libertarianism, particularly anarcho-capitalism. He was a founder of the Ludwig von Mises Institute. Most internet libertarians seem to be followers of his school of libertarianism (although they often do not know it...). His book "The Ethics of Liberty" covers children in chapter 14. You can find the PDF online. There's a big chunk of chapter 14 here [2]. Here's the most relevant part: Even from birth, the parental ownership is not absolute but of a "trustee" or guardianship kind. In short, every baby as soon as it is born and is therefore no longer contained within his mother's body possesses the right of self-ownership by virtue of being a separate entity and a potential adult. It must therefore be illegal and a violation of the child's rights for a parent to aggress against his person by mutilating, torturing, murdering him, etc. On the other hand, the very concept of "rights" is a "negative" one, demarcating the areas of a person's action that no man may properly interfere with. No man can therefore have a "right" to compel someone to do a positive act, for in that case the compulsion violates the right of person or property of the individual being coerced. Thus, we may say that a man has a right to his property (i.e., a right not to have his property invaded), but we cannot say that anyone has a "right" to a "living wage," for that would mean that someone would be coerced into providing him with such a wage, and that would violate the property rights of the people being coerced. As a corollary this means that, in the free society, no man may be saddled with the legal obligation to do anything for another, since that would invade the former's rights; the only legal obligation one man has to another is to respect the other man's rights. Applying our theory to parents and children, this means that a parent does not have the right to aggress against his children, but also that the parent should not have a legal obligation to feed, clothe, or educate his children, since such obligations would entail positive acts coerced upon the parent and depriving the parent of his rights. The parent therefore may not murder or mutilate his child, and the law properly outlaws a parent from doing so. But the parent should have the legal right not to feed the child, i.e., to allow it to die. The law, therefore, may not properly compel the parent to feed a child or to keep it alive. (Again, whether or not a parent has a moral rather than a legally enforceable obligation to keep his child alive is a completely separate question.) This rule allows us to solve such vexing questions as: should a parent have the right to allow a deformed baby to die (e.g., by not feeding it)? The answer is of course yes, following a fortiori from the larger right to allow any baby, whether deformed or not, to die. (Though, as we shall see below, in a libertarian society the existence of a free baby market will bring such "neglect" down to a minimum.) [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murray_Rothbard http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murray_Rothbard [2] http://mises.org/library/children-and-rights http://mises.org/library/children-and-rights
- sukilot 11y ago
  The fact that mothers give birth to babies,not to fully formed and educated adults, is a major unsolved problem of Libertarian and Objectivist (and part of Conservative) philosophy.