Freedom for Myself, and That’s All

• Tweet
• 
• Share on Tumblr

Matt Taibbi nails it on the problem of partisan support for the Constitution, which we see from all comers these days:

The reason I really respect the Ron Paul people is that they’re consistent on all of these things. If they don’t want the government telling you you can’t buy a gun, they also don’t want the federal government telling you not to smoke weed or patronize a prostitute. Paul understands that you can’t make appeals on general principle unless you actually believe in that principle across the board.

It seems to me that a huge problem that Americans on both sides of the aisle have is that they believe in personal freedom, but only for themselves; for the other guy they seem always to want a powerful and intrusive federal government. Red staters and blue staters are both equally guilty of this in my experience. You get conservatives asking for a federal ban on gay marriage and then in the same breath screaming that abortion should be a states-rights issue. And you get progressives who want to pass their own state-by-state medical marijuana laws clamoring for federal bans on handguns.

The simple statement – one that I make repeatedly – The Constitution isn’t about political parties, it isn’t about political ideologies…it’s about liberty. Keep the government to those powers delegated to it in the Constitution, and be free to battle with each other…in your own area.