JD Vance on limited government and libertarianism:

[Matt Collins]

https://twitter.com/JohnStossel/status/1813273686641717306

 

[Matt Collins]

Vance wrote an entire op-ed decrying libertarianism and limited government:


https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2019/07/beyond-libertarianism

 

[Brian4Liberty]

Vance wrote an entire op-ed decrying libertarianism and limited government:


https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2019/07/beyond-libertarianism

BEYOND LIBERTARIANISM
by J. D. Vance - 7 . 26 . 19

I want to talk a little bit about the American dream, because I think it animates so much of what we think about and talk about. My book Hillbilly Elegy is really an exploration of the American dream as it was experienced by me and my family and the broader community in which I lived. And in a very important way it chronicled a real decline in the American dream—though not because people weren't consuming as much as they have in the past. Hillbilly Elegy is a story about family decline, childhood trauma, opioid abuse, community decline, the decline of the manufacturing sector, and the loss of dignity and purpose and meaning that come along with it.

I grew up in a pretty rough environment, and what the American dream meant to me was that I had a decent enough job to support my family and that I could be a good husband and a good father. That's what I most wanted out of my life. It wasn't the American dream of the striver. It wasn't the American dream, frankly, that I think animates much of this town. I didn't care if I went to an Ivy League law school, I didn't care if I wrote a best-selling book, I didn't care if I had a lot of money. What I wanted was to be able to give my family and my children the things that I hadn't had as a kid: That was the sense in which the American dream mattered most to me.

That American dream is undoubtedly in decline. I want to talk a little bit about why I think that's happening and what a conservative politics has to do in response, but I think a first step is to distinguish between a conservative politics and a libertarian politics. I don't mean to criticize libertarianism. I first learned about conservatism as an idea from Friedrich Hayek. The Road to Serfdom is one of the best books that I've ever read about conservative thought. But in an important way I believe that conservatives have outsourced our economic and domestic policy thinking to libertarians.

Because that is such a loaded word, and because labels mean different things to different people, I want to define it as precisely as I can. So if you don't consider yourself a libertarian under this definition, I apologize: What I'm going after is the view that so long as public outcomes and social goods are produced by free individual choices, we shouldn't be too concerned about what those goods ultimately produce. For example, in Silicon Valley, it is common for neuroscientists to make much more at technology companies like Apple and Facebook—where they quite literally are making money addicting our children to devices and applications that warp their brains—than neuroscientists who are trying to cure Alzheimer's.

I know a lot of libertarians will say, “that is the consequence of free choices,” or “that is the consequence of people buying and selling labor on an open market and so long as there isn't any government coercion in that relationship, we shouldn't be so concerned about it.” But what I'm arguing is that conservatives should be concerned about it. We should be concerned that our economy is geared more toward developing applications than curing terrible diseases. We should care about a whole host of public goods, and should actually be willing to use politics and political power to accomplish some of those public goods.

Now, I want to tell a story—one of the most heartbreaking stories I've heard since my book came out. It’s about a woman I met in southeastern Ohio, which is ground zero for the opioid problem and many of the other social problems in this country. She was telling me about a young patient she had who had become addicted to opioids. He was eight years old and already addicted to Percocets. This kid became addicted by doing drug runs for his family, who were drug addicts and sometimes bought and sold on the side. Because they didn't have a lot of money, if he made a successful drug run they would actually give him a Percocet as a reward. That was how this kid became addicted to opioids at the tender age of eight.

I think there's a tendency in our politics on the right to look at this kid and say, “You know, it's a tragedy what's happened to him, but it's fundamentally a tragedy that political power can't touch. His parents need to make better decisions.” This child, God willing, needs to make better decisions when he grows up, but that ignores the way in which human beings actually live their lives. This kid lives in a community that has too few spare dollars to spend on a kid, but has too many spare opioids. That is a political problem. That is something that we decided to do using political power. We allowed commercial actors to sell these drugs into our communities. We allowed our regulatory state to approve these drugs and to do nothing when it was clear that these substances were starting to affect our communities. That was a political choice, and political power can actually fix it.

That kid lives in a community where even if he makes good choices later in life, there are virtually no good jobs for a kid of his educational status and social class if he wants to earn a decent wage. Those jobs in his community have largely gone overseas—thanks to forces of globalization that we unleashed because of political choices. We made the choice that we wanted that kid to be able to buy cheaper consumer goods at Walmart instead of have access to a good job, and maybe that was a defensible choice—I don't think it was—but it was a choice, and we have to stop pretending that it wasn't. Globalization and the damage that it wreaks are political choices.

And as this kid ages—if we want this kid to live the American dream—he needs good jobs. He needs to live in a community that isn't ravaged by opioid problems. He certainly needs to make good individual choices and exercise personal responsibility—I don't think conservatives should discard our focus on that. But as he ages, he will encounter other circumstances and other environments that are influenced, again, by the political choices that we make.

I have been blown away by some of the research I've seen in the past year on how pornography warps young adolescent minds. We know that young adults are marrying less. They're having fewer children. They're engaging in healthy and productive relationships less and less. And we know that at least one of the causes of this is that we have allowed pornography, under the guise of libertarianism, to seep into our youngest minds through the channels of the Internet. Again, we made a political choice that the freedom to consume pornography was more important than public goods like marriage and family and happiness. We can't ignore the fact that we made that choice, and we shouldn't shy away from the fact that we can make new choices in the future.

Even if this kid marches through the opioid epidemic, even if he makes it through and finds himself in a healthy relationship, and wants to do the thing that I defined as core to my American Dream—start a family and have happy and healthy children—he will confront a society, a culture, and a market economy that is more hostile to people having children than perhaps at any other period in American history.

There are a lot of ways to measure a healthy society, but the most important way to measure a healthy society is by whether a nation is having enough children to replace itself. Do people look to the future and see a place worth having children in? Do they have economic prospects and the expectation that they're going to be able to put a good roof over that kid's head, food on the table, and provide that child with a good education? By every statistic that we have, people are answering “no” to all of those questions. Our people aren't having enough children to replace themselves. That should bother us.

Now, I know some libertarians will say, “Well that choice comes from free individuals. If people are choosing not to have children, if they're choosing to spend their money on vacations, or nicer cars, or nicer apartments, then we should be okay with that.” And I think there is a good libertarian-sympathetic response to that. We could point out, for example, that areas of the world with fewer children are less dynamic. We could point out that we have a social safety net that's entirely built on the idea that you will have more people coming into the system than retiring, and that therefore we need children being born.

But I think that to make this about economics is to grant too much of a premise that we don't want to grant. Because when I think about my own life, the thing that has made my life best is the fact that I'm the father of a two-year-old son. When I think about the demons of my own childhood and the way that those demons have melted away in the love and laughter of my own son, when I see friends of mine who have grown up in tough circumstances, who have become fathers and become more connected to their communities, to their families, to their faith because of the role of their own children, I say we want babies not just because they're economically useful. We want more babies because children are good, and we believe children are good because we're not sociopaths.

Libertarians are not heartless, and I don't mean to suggest that they are. I think they often recognize many of the same problems that we recognize, but they are so uncomfortable with political power, or so skeptical of whether political power can accomplish anything, that they don't want to actually use it to solve or even address some of these problems.

But to me, ignoring the fact that we have political choices, or pretending that there aren't political choices to be made, is itself a political choice. The failure to use political power that the public has given is a choice, and it's a choice that has increasingly had, and I think increasingly will have, incredibly dire consequences for ourselves and our families.

A popular libertarian author talks a lot about the decline of community, the decline of family, the fact that people aren't marrying as much, that they're spending more time on social media, that they feel increasingly isolated, and that in part because of that isolation we're seeing skyrocketing rates of youth suicide. This author is smart about the fact that technology is at least part of the reason why we're seeing all these trends.

But if you think those things are problems—if you think children killing themselves is a problem, if you think people not having families, not getting married, and feeling more isolated are problems—then you need to be willing to use political power when it's appropriate to actually solve those problems. If people are spending too much time addicted to devices designed to addict them, we can't just blame consumer choice. We have to blame ourselves for not doing something. If people are killing themselves because they're being bullied in online chat rooms, we can't just say that parents need to exercise more responsibility.

We live in an environment that’s shaped by our laws and public policy, and we cannot hide from that fact anymore. I think the question conservatives confront at this key moment is this: Whom do we serve? Do we serve pure, unfettered commercial freedom? Do we serve commerce at the expense of the public good? Or do we serve something higher? And are we willing to use political power to actually accomplish those things?

My answer is simple: I serve my child. And it has become abundantly clear that I cannot serve two masters. I cannot defend commerce when it is used to addict his toddler brain to screens, and to addict his adolescent brain to pornography. I cannot defend the rights of drug companies to sell poison to his neighbors without any consequences because those people chose to take those drugs.

It is time, as Ronald Reagan once said, for choosing. And I choose my son, I choose the civic constitution necessary to support and sustain a good life form, and I choose the healthy American nation necessary to defend and support that civic constitution.

A bit naive, written like a younger person. He didn't have much breadth of knowledge.

Looks to me like a person who had a small introduction to some "libertarianism", and found flaws in it. He may have also been exposed to the typical crazed libertarian who runs around naked at a convention praising libertine hedonism.

At the same time, it is popular to bash libertarians, especially in the circles he ended up running in. An article like this could be an attempt to curry favor and fit in.

All of that being said, his main target seems to be technology, and it's ill effect upon children and young people. As a matter of fact, the article is openly inspired by his recent parenthood, and how to protect his son. Dare I say he was a bit emotionally centered at the time?

Let's talk about a problem he identified: people having less children. Ok, fine, that may be a statistical fact. First of all, is it really a problem? Second of all, what are the actual, provable causes? Thirdly, what are the solutions, that once again are provable and possible?

He has not provided evidence to prove any of those three questions. But it sounds like he has jumped to a lot of "solutions" that he would like to throw straight into law.

Once again, naive youth may explain some of the problems with his essay. Hopefully he has a somewhat different opinion five years later.

 

[unknown]

There's Rand and Massie.

And then everyone else.

 

[wizardwatson]

Vance wrote an entire op-ed decrying libertarianism and limited government:


https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2019/07/beyond-libertarianism

It's like Obama running as a Republican. I'm gettin' the Bush/Cheney feels with this arrangement. Trump is P.R., Vance runs the country.

I give this write-up an F.

It's sounds more like how an actual libertarian might criticize an anarchist. "Just do whatever you want? Political power is bad? How's that gonna work?"

Not a single mention of the role of government. Judging from this writeup, I'd assume the purpose of the federal government is to 'fight evil' I guess and implement a nanny state?

This tactic seems to be more and more prevalent. "All right commies! New plan! Everybody needs to register Republican, grow a beard and reference books by smart people. Anyone who disagrees, you call them what you are."

It's funny this bozo is also a recent converted Catholic. Ole Pope frankie the Jesuit is havin' a field day excommunicating real believers and teamin' up with the Masons to give the world the unifying religion it needs.

I'm sure this guy will be right there making sure we all follow it for our own good.

Not the wiz though.

Beelzebro Inc. can fuck off.

 

[PAF]

It's like Obama running as a Republican. I'm gettin' the Bush/Cheney feels with this arrangement. Trump is P.R., Vance runs the country.

I give this write-up an F.

It's sounds more like how an actual libertarian might criticize an anarchist. "Just do whatever you want? Political power is bad? How's that gonna work?"

Not a single mention of the role of government. Judging from this writeup, I'd assume the purpose of the federal government is to 'fight evil' I guess and implement a nanny state?

This tactic seems to be more and more prevalent. "All right commies! New plan! Everybody needs to register Republican, grow a beard and reference books by smart people. Anyone who disagrees, you call them what you are."

It's funny this bozo is also a recent converted Catholic. Ole Pope frankie the Jesuit is havin' a field day excommunicating real believers and teamin' up with the Masons to give the world the unifying religion it needs.

I'm sure this guy will be right there making sure we all follow it for our own good.

Not the wiz though.

Beelzebro Inc. can $#@! off.

He's big government alright. Seems he also didn't want to be held accountable on H.R. 7888:

NO VOTE H.R. 7888 FISA Reauthorization

NO VOTE H.R. 7888 Surveilling U.S. Citizens

Voted NO H.R. 6363 Spending Reductions

Voted YES H.R. 4366 Consolidated Appropriations Minibus

Voted NO H.R. 3746 Spending Reductions

Voted YES S. 870 Federal Firefighter Grants
​

Federal Fire Fighter Grants... seems he's inline to Trump wanting to Federally Fund Nationwide "Stop and Frisk" and provide complete Immunity to Local LEO.

 

[WarriorLiberty]

There's Rand and Massie.

And then everyone else.

Tim Pool actually believes JD Vance is a good pick as well yeah.
I doubt.

I wonder how many of these same Trump supporters that are supporting Trump/Vance going to react if and when Trump wins and trump pushes back John Bolton to the White House? or even worse Niki Haley?

Polticans like Vance and Trump are clearly saying all the right words and soundbites.

 

[GlennwaldSnowdenAssanged]

Who is better Pence or Vance?

 

[oyarde]

Who is better Pence or Vance?

Pence is proven and consistent . An exact known entity , does what says . Agree or disagree w/ his position .Rare in politics. Ran a state as Gov w/ a surplus while cutting taxes . He can take anything you give him and run it without making it worse , also rare in politicians.Vance voting for a yr, Apples to oranges, voted against spending cuts only time he could . Vance appears to be an even bigger govt and spending guy and is an unknown entity that brings really nothing and isnt suitable at this time to be considered heir apparent. Also his senate seat is most likely to be filled by someone worse than him. So obviously Id take Pence as vp and leave Vance in Senate if Those were only choices . Pence or Vance at this time are not going to beat who dems run after biden if they dont take a female. This ticket isnt going to be able to offer a lot w/ schumer running senate and even house and probably isnt remotely fiscally conservative enough. Youd basically be voting for it so youd get some executive orders against dem energy terrorism and hopefully better judges and no additions to woke shit. Nothing though is going to happen to prevent the demise of the FRN dollar and future of America. Sometime within next decade or two itll be game over . This is not an exciting ticket with great hope for future.Probably only Haley wouldve been a worse pick. Its about a dead even race right now . Going to come down to only a few states. Best thing GOP has going for it right this minute is Stein , Kennedy and Cornell West are going to get votes. Without that GOP probably had little chance.

 

[Invisible Man]

He is a big government guy, and in some respects more of one than the other VP finalists. But he's also seemingly much less interventionist on foreign policy than they, and more Republicans and Democrats, are.

Honestly, it's odd that he was an outspoken opponent of Trump, because he seems pretty similar to him.

 

[wizardwatson]

He is a big government guy, and in some respects more of one than the other VP finalists. But he's also seemingly much less interventionist on foreign policy than they, and more Republicans and Democrats, are.

Honestly, it's odd that he was an outspoken opponent of Trump, because he seems pretty similar to him.

seemingly....

What Republican administration ever ran on a pro-interventionist policy and got elected?

The platform of all these insiders is the same. It is called lying.

 

[Invisible Man]

seemingly....

What Republican administration ever ran on a pro-interventionist policy and got elected?

The platform of all these insiders is the same. It is called lying.

That is a good point. But in this case, I don't just mean campaign rhetoric, but active opposition to his own party regarding Ukraine aid as a Senator.

 

[acptulsa]

seemingly....

What Republican administration ever ran on a pro-interventionist policy and got elected?

The platform of all these insiders is the same. It is called lying.

 

[oyarde]

If I recall national debt was 5.4 trillion then.Grew by 4 trillion alone in 2020.Those days will be yearned for soon.lol

 

[acptulsa]

If I recall national debt was 5.4 trillion then.Grew by 4 trillion alone in 2020.Those days will be yearned for soon.lol

Soon?

I've been yearning for the Twentieth Century back for a good 23 years now.

 

[Matt Collins]

Someone shared with me a Tweet by Vance trashing Ron Paul years ago, but I don't know if it is authentic since he has scraped his Twitter account. Anyone know how to corroborate that?

 

[Invisible Man]

Someone shared with me a Tweet by Vance trashing Ron Paul years ago, but I don't know if it is authentic since he has scraped his Twitter account. Anyone know how to corroborate that?

What did it say?

 

[wizardwatson]

Someone shared with me a Tweet by Vance trashing Ron Paul years ago, but I don't know if it is authentic since he has scraped his Twitter account. Anyone know how to corroborate that?

From Grok:

My ask:

Has JD Vance every commented or gave his opinion on Ron Paul?

Grok:

According to the information provided, there is a tweet by @McCormackJohn on July 15, 2024, which quotes J.D. Vance from 2012 saying, "Ron Paul’s “ideas on national defense are downright scary. If he get the nomination I will donate every spare dollar I have to Barack Obama—at least he believes in a strong national defense.” This suggests that J.D. Vance has previously commented on Ron Paul, expressing a negative view of Paul's ideas on national defense.

Here is the tweet Grok is referencing:

I'm really loving Grok as a Twitter news junkie. Saves be a butt-ton of time.

EDIT: This is a LIE by the way about Ron Paul's positions if the tweet is a legit quote.

 

[Brian4Liberty]

A bit naive, written like a younger person. He didn't have much breadth of knowledge.

Looks to me like a person who had a small introduction to some "libertarianism", and found flaws in it. He may have also been exposed to the typical crazed libertarian who runs around naked at a convention praising libertine hedonism.

At the same time, it is popular to bash libertarians, especially in the circles he ended up running in. An article like this could be an attempt to curry favor and fit in.

All of that being said, his main target seems to be technology, and it's ill effect upon children and young people. As a matter of fact, the article is openly inspired by his recent parenthood, and how to protect his son. Dare I say he was a bit emotionally centered at the time?

Let's talk about a problem he identified: people having less children. Ok, fine, that may be a statistical fact. First of all, is it really a problem? Second of all, what are the actual, provable causes? Thirdly, what are the solutions, that once again are provable and possible?

He has not provided evidence to prove any of those three questions. But it sounds like he has jumped to a lot of "solutions" that he would like to throw straight into law.

Once again, naive youth may explain some of the problems with his essay. Hopefully he has a somewhat different opinion five years later.

Another observation on the article by Vance. It almost infers that drugs, social media, pornography, etc are all problems created by libertarians.

That's quite an assumption. Have "libertarians" been in charge of the nation for the past 50 years?

As I stated above "Second of all, what are the actual, provable causes?"

Sorry, there are multiple causes, the most relevant coming from a leftists and a long term Marxist push, along with corrupt cronyism. Blaming "libertarianism" for all of societies woes is ludicrous.

 

[dannno]

Let's talk about a problem he identified: people having less children. Ok, fine, that may be a statistical fact. First of all, is it really a problem? Second of all, what are the actual, provable causes? Thirdly, what are the solutions, that once again are provable and possible?

He has not provided evidence to prove any of those three questions. But it sounds like he has jumped to a lot of "solutions" that he would like to throw straight into law.

First of all, yes, people not getting married and having children is a problem for both sexes and the future of society.. but is pornography the cause of this problem? I would say no, it has nothing to do with the cause of the problem, or has a very small impact. On the contrary, it is more of a consequence of the true cause of the problem, which is described below.

The main cause of the problem is cultural.

It centers around "hookup culture".

Pre-hookup culture, you had men and women date -> marry (and yes, sometimes they had sex before marriage). Men/women who were 8s typically dated and married men/women who were in the 7-9 range. Men/women who were 5's typically dated and married men/women who were in the 4-6 range.

Starting mostly in the 70s, but really not peaking until the 90s and on, hookup culture permeated society. A major cause of which was cultural influences as well as economic influences where women were encouraged to go to college, be more "independent" and career driven. They were told they didn't need to marry young, they should wait until their late 20s or 30s to get married.

This changed men/women relations to sex -> dating -> marriage?

It also encouraged women to have sex with HVM (high value men) at a young age without requiring any longterm commitment. These HVM were more than willing to accommodate. Lower value men thought they could get something out of this hookup culture too, but ended up being largely pushed out of the dating pool completely. This is where pornography as a "consequence" of the problem comes in. Suddenly you have a large pool of men who are having a very difficult time in the dating market because the majority of women are having sex and dating a minority of men, the HVM, but not getting married.

Now you have words like "situationships" to describe women who are hooking up with HVM, but not getting any commitment or monogamy because there is no monogamy. These men are having sex with many different women at once. Meanwhile these women are ignoring the vast swaths of men who would be willing to commit to them.

Conservatives who think they can change culture with laws are stupid. It doesn't work that way.

And the idea that pornography is the reason men aren't getting married is silly.. The men who are hooking up and dating women don't need pornography, they can get laid whenever they want. The problem is that too many women are not willing to date men who aren't in this pool of HVM. Instead they focus on the HVM, who now have so many options, they don't need to get married.

In fact, for women, these non-HVM are the definition of "ick". The HVM act nonchalant and more confident around women because they know they can get it from another woman if they want. This is very attractive to women instinctively. The men who have a difficult time getting women act more nervous and less confident, which is a major turn-off.

Consequently, men who "fall" for women are a major "ick". It used to be men who put a lot of effort into chasing and dating a woman, giving her flowers, fell in love, begged her to be with him, would walk 5,000 miles and 5,000 more, those were the men who women would choose because it showed commitment. Now, the worst thing you can do, the thing that drives women away the most, is showing that you care about them too much. In fact, it's gotten so bad that even HVM who do fall for women often become unattractive to many women because it shows "weakness".

I don't know what to do about all this other than stop lying to women. Stop telling them to wait to get married when they are older. Tell them the truth that they will find a better man more willing to commit at a younger age, when they are more fertile and thus more attractive. Encourage them to look for men who have good character, care about them and show signs of strong commitment. This starts with fathers and mothers educating their daughters, but really women as a whole need to learn these things and start teaching it to each other and cut out the nonsense they have been taught the last few decades.