Conservatives copulating in the street?

Jock — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 16:37:25 +0000

Not the sort of image I wanted over dinner:

“The Conservatives are half right and half wrong.

“They are right when they admit that fifty years of social engineering by Conservative and Labour Governments have been a miserable failure. We have been taxed. We have been subsidised. We have been regulated. We have been endlessly preached at. And, after two generations of all this, we have, as a nation, been made neither happier nor more virtuous. There is more illegitimacy, more divorce, more drunkenness, more crime.

“But the Conservatives are wrong when they believe that the harms of social engineering can be cured by different social engineering.

“Above all, this Report shows the usual Tory obsession with sex. These people seem to believe that, without laws to restrain us, most people would be copulating in the street. This is probably true for some Conservative politicians. Most ordinary people, however, are naturally inclined to join in stable, heterosexual unions and to produce children. Some people are not inclined to this, and libertarians respect their choice. But most people are so inclined. They do not need to be bribed with their own money into getting married. They do not need “help” from politicians."

The trouble is, I do find Sean Gabb to be quite intemperate and obnoxious when presenting his arguments, and I'm not clear how this helps the message. I too am an "angry not-so-young man" as far as government interference in our lives goes but I hope I keep my language at least temperate! The question is, how is a libertarian supposed to put libertarian policies into effect except by winning the power to do so in the first place?

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Conservatives copulating in the street?