Daily Skiff

People often think that I am a conservative, but I'm not. I'm a libertarian.

Conservatives take pride in the idea that they want a more free government.

"Government's first duty is to protect the people, not run their lives," Ronald Reagan once said.

But conservatives also frequently oppose abortion, gay marriage, marijuana legalization and other views that constantly contradict what freedom is.

They don't want government to grow unless it grows how they want it to.

Many conservatives don't adhere to the idea of leaving the market alone anymore. Some approved of the new stimulus package or criticized big businesses for being greedy.

Liberals, on the other hand, like personal freedom but distrust market systems and like to impose strange environmental rules. They talk about enacting failing poverty programs and spending tax payer money left and right. Well, mostly left.

More than often, liberals shut out dissenters. Liberals have frequently called me an idiot because I believe in free markets or because I don't think the world is going to blow up from global warming.

If this is the definition of both sides, neither appeal to me.

So this leaves me asking myself, what am I? Frequently the word libertarian comes up. However, when most people hear this, all they think of is people who want drugs to be legalized.

While libertarian is a good term to classify myself, a more accurate term is classical liberal. I say this because this is how one would classify our earliest founding fathers like John Adams and Thomas Jefferson.

They saw the trouble created by market planners and they knew the best way to run a country was to let people run their own lives.

If a man wishes to marry another man, a woman wishes to sell her body for sex or someone wants to burn a flag, then he or she should be able to, as long as they don't hurt anyone else in the process. I may disagree with their choices but that does not give me the power to take their choices away.

Liberalism was the opposition to monarchy and aristocracy. The idea that we have inalienable rights. Today's liberals have taken the word and twisted it into something that describes high taxes, protective tariffs and values against free markets.

Government should stay out of the economy, out of people's bedrooms and overall out of people's lives.

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