I'll use words lifted shamelessly from the comments at HuffBlow.
First the anti-freedom argument:
That's my problem with the LP - its a great idea, but impractical.
Sort of like Communism was a great idea in theory, but the practical results didn't work out so well...
Sadly, as much as people hate it - you need a central beaurocratic element to manage things like infrastructure, hospitals, social security, pensions, voting registration, etc..
How do you keep big cities running efficiently without some sort of government?
How much 'help' do you give to people who can't help themselves?
Would it be politically acceptable to let people die who haven't the means or ability to help themselves?
What's an acceptable amount of intervention, and how much govt would you need to cover the basics
In a country with 300 million people, you can't rely on people going it alone.
Well, you could, I guess - but it would just be anarchy with property rights....
As of yet, I haven't heard any concrete, practical policies from the LP as to how they would address these problems. They good with the Big Idea - and I agree with a lot of the theory - but its the Small Stuff that gets you every time.
The "blast the moron out of the water" response:
By trying to pose these questions you are in fact exposing the illogical idea of government. The pseudo-answer of "the government will do it" is a total non-answer " in fact, it is an anti-answer, in that it provides the illusion of an answer where one does not in fact exist.
You blatantly ignore the problem of "infinite regression". If human beings are in general too irrational and selfish to work out the challenges of social organization in a productive and positive manner, then they are far too irrational and selfish to be given the monopolistic violence of state power, or vote for their leaders.
Your core fantasy of "government" is the idea there exists a group who are so wise, so benevolent, so omniscient and so incorruptible that we should turn over to them the education of our children, the preservation of our elderly, the salvation of the poor, the provision of vital services, the healing of the sick, the defense of the realm and of property, the administration of justice, the punishment of criminals, and the regulation of virtually every aspect of a massive, infinitely complex and ever-changing social and economic system. These living man-gods have such perfect knowledge and perfect wisdom that we should hand them weapons of mass destruction, and the endless power to tax, imprison and print money " and nothing but good, plenty and virtue will result.
This is utter nonsense and Libertarianism exposes this fallacy.
In Ron Paul's own words, "I don't want to run your life or the world, the constitution doesn't give me the authority and I wouldn't know how to or want to even if I did".
He said it, and thirty years of public records coupled with the man's own intrinsic honesty proves he means it.
Government, in all it's forms, over all the millenia, is death.
It is choking bio warfare plague, chemical warfare, neutron bombs, radiation sickness, the lime covered mass grave, the cremation oven, the killing fields.
It is evil, it attracts the most evil of people to serve it, and until such time as humanity sees fit to eliminate the very concept from it's collective will, then it had damn well better be bound, shackled and chained down by a constitution that is immutable and iron clad.
Failure to do so will result in the remnants of humanity poring over 5 or 6 billion corpses and wondering what the hell went wrong.
I understand this at an instinctive level, the founders understood this, prophets, messiahs sages and poets understood this.
Ron Paul understands this.
And that's why I support him.
