Wednesday, January 23, 2008
THE LIBERTARIAN AGENDA
From the website:
The libertarian movement has promoted equal rights for the GLBT community since its inception. What's taking everyone else so long? The Libertarian Party was the first major party to endorse rights for the GLBT community, including the right to marry individuals of choice regardless of gender. Libertarians maintain that every non-violent individual has the absolute right to the pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness. Basic human rights don't only extend to those who are in relationships with people of the opposite gender.
Libertarians believe that every human being is entitled to equality before the law and fair treatment as an individual responsible for his or her own actions. They oppose racism, sexism, and sexual-preference bigotry, whether perpetrated by private individuals or by governments. In accordance with libertarian principles, the Libertarian PArty maintains a staunch pro-privacy and pro-individual rights stance without excuse or exception. In fact, the LP has called for the repeal of laws against voluntary homosexual and heterosexual behavior since its very first platform in 1974. The current platform states, "We believe that adults have the right to private choice in consensual sexual activity. We oppose any government attempt to dictate, prohibit, control, or encourage any private lifestyle, living arrangement or contractual relationship. We support repeal of existing laws and policies which are intended to condemn, affirm, encourage, or deny sexual lifestyles or any set of attitudes about such lifestyles." Libertarians also condemn restraints on adult sexual entertainment, including broadcasting and the Internet.
At the website there are lists of notable GLBTs. Two entries on the list are from the Cato Institute:
David Boaz (Executive Vice President, Cato Istitute)
Tom G. Palmer (Senior Fellow, Cato Institute)
Meanwhile Media Matters (scroll down at the link) reports on Cato Institute member Doub Bandow, who just happens to be on Fr. Sirico's Acton Institute Board:
Two more conservative columnists on the take
As the Year of Fake News comes to a close, two more conservative columnists have snuck in under the wire to join Armstrong Williams, Maggie Gallagher, Michael McManus, Charles Chieppo, and much of the Iraqi press among the ranks of supposedly independent "news" figures who turned out to be on the take.
Doug Bandow, a senior fellow at the conservative/libertarian Cato Institute and a syndicated columnist for Copley News Service, has admitted taking thousands of dollars in payments from Jack Abramoff in exchange for writing about topics Abramoff's clients were interested in. BusinessWeek Online reported that Bandow admitted "that he had accepted money from Abramoff for writing between 12 and 24 articles over a period of years, beginning in the mid '90s."
Bandow explained, "It was a lapse of judgment on my part, and I take full responsibility for it."
It must have been quite a "lapse" to have lasted "a period of years." Suzette Martinez Standring, president of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists, doesn't buy Bandow's explanation, saying what Bandow did "isn't a lapse in judgment, it's soul-selling."
Accuracy in Media also reports on Bandow's source of income:
The liberals want the public to believe that Jack Abramoff was a "Republican" lobbyist, even though his clients, and associated firms showered money on Democrats such as Harry Reid and Byron Dorgan. Abramoff's non-conservative tendencies were also in evidence in his selection of subsidized columnists.
The main one, Doug Bandow, describes himself as pro-drug legalization, anti-abortion, pro-free market, and anti-Iraq War. ...
The story about Bandow was broken by Eamon Javers of Business Week, who accurately noted that Cato is a libertarian rather than a conservative think tank. Javers noted evidence that Bandow wrote favorably about Abramoff's clients.
While it does tremendous work on some economic and foreign policy matters, the Cato Institute is pro-legalization of drugs and pro-homosexual rights. Bandow may have been pro-life, but a Cato scholar has written that abortion is "an issue about which reasonable people can have reasonable differences." Hence, the group has not officially taken a pro-life position.
