Where are the Obamas in all this?

McCain is hardly a small-government guy.

Widespread change in mores = "social liberation".

In what fucking universe?

McCain could be advocating death to each family's first born son as a running platform and he'll still be a shoe in because the two democratic camps have managed to make each other look sleazier than a Christina Aguilera video.

Sadly, with either McCain or Obama, we'll either get statist or statist.

Mike Huckabee is clearly unhinged. His "big idea" of putting God into the constitution is deranged. He also has a problem with kangaroos. That's possibly something to concern a prospective prime minister of Australia but hardly a pressing US issue.

Hilary Clinton is clearly unhinged. Her naked lust for power is such that she'd have virgins sacrificed daily 'til November if only she could keep Bill's hands off them. And the cigar. What the fucking hell was Slick Willy thinking there?

I therefore reject the Cato analysis. These are not broadly based social forces, these are somewhat demented individuals. Just look at how unpopular they are. Huckabee got nowhere and Hillary isn't exactly Ms Popularity. At least half the US populace want to see her tarred and feathered and her supporters don't really seem to warm to her much either.

Alisa,
Obama. Gawd alone knows. My deep suspicion wrt the junior senator from Illinois is that he's not exactly the sharpest tool in the box and seeing him say "change" every 20s has not altered this perception. There is an irony here. America's first black president - a thing that new epochs are supposed to be made from - and he turns out to be a complete non-entity. I suspect he would be a non-entity because I just don't see him having the low-cunning required to get stuff through congress. He is, in short, a suit full of bugger-all. Charismatic - yes*, effective - no.

*Interesting that we have such low standards for this trait with politicos. In another field, Obama would merely be personable but seeing as he's running against a militaristic geriatric and a veritable bitch on wheels suddenly he's Mr Charisma.

I feel The Simpsons coming on:

Children: We are the mediocre presidents. You won't find our faces on dollars or on cents! There's Taylor, there's Tyler, There's Filmore and there's Hayes. There's William Henry Harrison,

W.H Harrison: I died in thirty days!

Children: We... are... the...
Adequate, forgettable,
Occasionally regrettable
Caretaker presidents of the U-S-A!

Interesting that we have such low standards for this trait with politicos. In another field, Obama would merely be personable but seeing as he's running against a militaristic geriatric and a veritable bitch on wheels suddenly he's Mr Charisma.

Which is why Obama is far more dangerous than Hillary: he is as bad (or worse) as her is all policy metrics, except he can smile convincingly.

Or perhaps
The Beverly Hillary Huckabees!

Come on in! Set a spell.
Keep your chains on though!

But can Obama get shit through congress?

Kennedy couldn't despite his "charisma". It took Johnson (who was an operator) to push through stuff like the civil rights stuff. Obama with the Hildebeast as VP would be the stuff nightmares are made of but...

Is that likely to happen? It wouldn't surprise me if Mrs Clinton had a voodoo doll of Mr Obama.

Nick, what better result could you possibly ask for than a President Obama not being able to "get shit through Congress"? We have too many laws and too much legislative activity now. I'd like nothing better than an entire Congressional term devoted to meaningless show trials like grilling Roger Clemens over the use of Human Growth Hormone. (Of course, I feel sorry for Mr. Clemens having to endure that, but I'm perfectly willing to sacrifice him for the greater good!)

Gridlock is Good! (That would be my mantra, if I had a mantra.)

Oh, and as to Obama having Hillary as VP: What sane person would want to have a Clinton behind him in the White House? Have you examined the Clintons' record (and body count)? What do you think Obama's life expectancy would be? Not a chance!

I therefore reject the Cato analysis. These are not broadly based social forces, these are somewhat demented individuals. Just look at how unpopular they are. Huckabee got nowhere and Hillary isn't exactly Ms Popularity. At least half the US populace want to see her tarred and feathered and her supporters don't really seem to warm to her much either.

Nick, I'd say your right about Huckabee, it was his ideas that got him tossed & I don't think we'll see them getting much more popular. But people* hate Hillary for who she is not for her ideas, Obama & McCain also fit the 'Hillary' model pretty well.

*Not everyone obviously, some people hate her ideas & (I know this is hard to believe) some people like her!

First Gabriel's point - translated into more polite language (not that I can not be very rude at times - I am very rude and abusive at times).

It is true that liberty depends on self control - if large numbers of people act like rabid dogs then government is going to have reason (or excuse) for lots of anti-liberty measures.

And it is also true that social breakdown is not "social liberation" or just some value free "change in social mores".

For example, if out of wedlock births increase so will demands that government (i.e. the taxpayers) look after the mothers and children.

"The mothers can go out to work and the children can be looked after in day care centers" thank whoever suggests this for a Karl Marx version of libertarianism. It is true that women have always worked - but mothers of young children can not really work full time. Unless these mothers are rich (and have servants to look after the children) or are part of a collective structure (which is what the left have always wanted).

Civil Society is not (CAN NOT) be made up of "atomised individuals" without such institutions as the family and voluntary associations (both religious and secular) the door is open to statism - indeed government is the only alternative to traditional Civil Society.

The left know this very well (and have always known it) - it is no accident that they spend so much time and energy trying to undermine and/or corrupt the institutions of civil society - from the family out.

Nor is it true that "things have always been this way" - for example the much cited "Kinsey Report" was a tissue of lies.

Most men were NOT disloyal to the wives (let alone all the other things in the report).

The decline of the family and of other traditional non-state cultural institutions leaves the door open to statism - and was meant to.

From the dreams of the Jacobins, right to the "turn on, tune in and drop out" of Herbert Marcuse.

Having made the Edmund Burke point, I can deal with the Senators:

Senator Hillary Clinton agrees with Governor Huckabee that government should make people do things "for there own good" rather than let the voluntary institutions of Civil Society work. For example, they would ban smoking in various places - rather than let the owners of these places decide whether or not smoking would be allowed. Sentator Obama is, of course, much the same. He has standard off-the-peg establishment opinions on such things as "anti discrimination" regulations and anti "hate speech" stuff - unless the "hate speech" is from "Black Liberation" theologians of course.

One can be a member of a church that supports this theology (an absurd mixture of inverted racism and Marxism) for more than 20 years and not know it.

And if anyone believes that I have a nice bridge to sell them.

"And if anyone believes that, I have a nice bridge to sell them" - the importance of punctuation.

Government spending - or being a "small government guy".

Both Senator Clinton and Senator Obama wish the welfare state programs to expand even faster than they are already - spendthrift George Walker Bush is really Calivin Coolidge you see, at least by their standards.

Senator John McCain has opposed "earmarks" for a long time (unlike the election year conversion of Senators Clinton and Obama) and has opposed government subsidies even when it is has been risky for him to do so - such as the eth subsidy before the Iowa vote or the the government "insurance" scam before the Florida vote. He also opposes a massive bail out for the housing finance sector (a BIG political risk to take this year) and Clinton style plans to allow people to break contracts by not allowing lenders to take houses when borrowers do not pay the money they have promised to pay (and no deal has been reached between lender and borrower).

Most importantly John McCain supports deregulation (for example of the health insurance market) entitlement program reform. Whereas Senators Clinton and Obama support even more entitlements.

Yes John McCain is a difficult man with many sharp edges - and YES he has many faults, of which campaign finance reform is only one (the man is learing by bitter experience just how much of a financial advantage McCain-Feingold gives the Democrats) - but to fail to support him now would be a worse mistake than failing to support him in 2000 was.

In 2000 a lot of people refused to support John McCain (because he is difficult man, who is wrong about X, Y, Z). And the Republic got the wild spending, "Compassionate Conservativism" of George Walker Bush - he of "No-Child-Left-Behind" and so on.

To McCain (for all his faults) helping others is about helping people with one's own resources - one's own time and money. To Bush the Bible was about State and Federal government.

And this is also the religion (indeed even more so the religion) of Senators Clinton and Obama.

People in this thread seem to be confusing the individuals (Huckabee and Hillary) with the archetypes Boaz is using them to represent: aggressive social conservatives and modern big-government liberals. I think he is making an excellent point, and he sums it up very nicely in the penultimate paragraph: "The Huckabees want to be your daddy, telling you what to do and what not to do. The Hillarys want to be your mommy, feeding you, tucking you in and setting your curfew."

I'm an adult, thank you very much, and don't need or want either. Unfortunately, our political system seems to attract and reward precisely those types of participants. I have no solution to offer.

From Boaz's article:

Hillary Clinton and Mike Huckabee are classic examples of two strains of big-government thinking in a country that otherwise prefers small government. (Emphasis mine.)

I'm just about dumbstruck. How can you characterize this country as preferring small government when such preference for small government as may be has been pilloried and hanged and drawn and quartered and stomped and outvoted and run roughshod over pretty much consistently for going on three centuries now? When the massive nightmare of a government we presently endure seeks -- and inexorably succeeds -- at every turn to insinuate itself still further into what yet somehow remains of the private lives of Americans?

Please.

What a relief that neither camp's glorious leader is going to be US president.

Wicked gallows humor there.

Nick, what better result could you possibly ask for than a President Obama not being able to "get shit through Congress"?

The only reason I suspect that out of the three he's the one, if I was an American, would vote for. The only reason.

Paul,
Ding. Once more you win the prize. It is divide and conquer.

(a) It is in the signal interests of libertarians that we are not seen as a bunch of isolationist nutcases hunkered down with heavy weapons. Because that is exactly what the bad guys will attempt to portray us as.

(b) Atomising society is exactly how statism progresses. Everyone needs to belong to something bigger (whether that be a church or the bridge club or the jolly boys) and I have a suspicion that the smoking ban is just the first volley in shutting down the boozers where people meet and talk. The Brits used to set the world aright with a pint and a fag. No more.

A lot of the NeuArbeit types are morons but not all. They see keeping the discontents out of the pub as a positive. My local is 100m from my house and I hardly go. A pint with a fag is my fucking birthright after a hard day's work.

Now that their dismemberment of civil society is almost complete the only "bigger" left is the state. I am not a violent man (actually I am) but I'll let that stick for rhetorical purposes but there are a large number of lamp-posts in Whitehall which should be made dual use.

Nick can't go down his local and have a smoke with his beer but schoolkids are fed halal meat just in case and they wonder why we're fucking pissed off?

When I think of 1960s "liberation" I think of promiscuity and drug abuse, both of which have wrecked millions of lives. Clougherty needs to choose his terms a lot more carefully.

The Hillarys also want government to fill God's shoes, stamping out sin and telling everyone what to do and what not to do - but with a perception of a (literal or figurative) God different from that of the Huckabees. Who was it that invented Political Correctness? Who is it that wants global warming skeptics to be run out of the scientific community? Who is it that wants to punish criticism of Islam while using National Endowment of the Arts funds to subsidize artistic slurs against Christianity? Who is it that employs government schools to serve as their temples of indoctrination?

And which faction's UK counterpart was responsible for this?

A columnist for the Telegraph has been arrested and held in a cell for saying that the rural minority should have "the same rights as blacks, Muslims and gays."

Not the Huckabees.

I agree a little bit with Alan K. Henderson.

The claim that the threat from the Huckabees is equivalent to the threat from the Hillarys is ridiculous.
The threat from the religious conservatives is confined to a few not too significant issues, and is in a steep decline. They really, don't have any power, and any harm they might do is minor. They represent the disappearing past.

On the other hand - the threat to freedom from leftist statists is big, and growing bigger all the time. They are on the rise, their power increases, and with it their level of intrusion or oppression. They represent the future.

There really is no comparison at all between the two.

And the glove puppet "Basil Brush" was subject to a criminal investigation for telling a story about how his wallet was stolen when he went to a gypsy fortune teller - racist story you see.

Who were the police going to arrest? The script writing? The person holding the glove puppet? The person doing the voice? Everyone?

Or perhaps they would have just tried to arrest and prosecute the glove puppet itself (had the television station not begged for mercy and promised never to broadcast anything like this again).

Yes I know it is absurd - but as Mr Henderson, Jacob and the others have pointed out, it is the nature of the modern powers-that-be.

Paul, I just want to refine something (no cuss words). It happens to be my personal belief that the 1960s was, first, a cultural disaster that it is quite possible the western world is incapable of recovering from and, secondly, created social changes that have in almost all cases led to the expansion of the state and, in most cases, are only sustainable because they are supported by the state. I would even go as far as to say that I cosider Libertarians who buy into the 60s myth to be no less my political enemies than the Left.

HOWEVER, let's just say that I'm wrong. The social changes of the 1960s would still not represent "social liberation" any more than if people had, en masse, decided to take up stamp-collecting and ornithology. That is to say that even if one ignores the innumerable disastrous consequences of the changes in social mores that occurred in the 60s they are still only neutral in terms of "social liberation". If people decide to stop wearing suits and instead have sex in the toilets of Wetherspoons then that is not "social liberation" any more than it would be "social enslavement" if the reverse occurs (please G-d) in the not too distant future.

I therefore reject the Cato analysis. These are not broadly based social forces, these are somewhat demented individuals. Just look at how unpopular they are. Huckabee got nowhere and Hillary isn't exactly Ms Popularity. At least half the US populace want to see her tarred and feathered and her supporters don't really seem to warm to her much either.

The underlying forces certainly are there. There are certainly evangelical Christians/the Religious Right who believe in taking away social freedom and legislating morality and then there are Democratic nanny-statists. These are the kind of Big-Government forces we libertarians despise. While it's true Hillary and Huckabee have personal flaws, Boaz is certainly correct in seeing the groups of supporters that backed them to represent significant statist factions in America.

AKH,
When I think of 1960s liberation I think of reliable contraception.

I think of the effective legalization of homosexuality.

I think of many positives.

A threat faced by our culture is Islam and Muslims want to hang queers and put contraception back to the dark ages.

You fight fire with water, not with fire.

Gabriel.

Yes I see your point.

Even if the point of view you present in your first paragraph was wrong, what you say in your second paragraph would still be correct.

Actually I have some sympathy for what you say even in your first paragraph.

I support such things as the repeal of the law against homosexual acts (i.e. I do not want to put people into prison for such things - and that is what the old law said should happen).

But just because I do not support government getting involved in morality it does not mean that I hold morality does not exist - or is only confined to the non aggression principle (justice is one virtue - it is not the only virtue).

Civilization depends, in part, on self restraint (not something a hot tempered person like me is very good at but there we go).

The people who taught "turn on, tune in and drop out2 did so with the deliberate intention of destroying the West (not "paranioia" - Marcuse and the others openly said so).

The old virtues of "thrift, hard work and self denial" are needed - although I do not show them.

And, yes, sexual restraint is needed to - loyality to ones family for example.

The old stress on this may have been over the top - but the modern lack of any restraint is over the top also.

Golden mean perhaps.

Improved contraception was a technological development, not a cultural one.

One might suggest improvement in racial relations as a positive fruit from the 60s counterculture, but it was merely a bit player. A vast cultural spectrum was responsible for that advance - and it was pioneered by Silent Generation types, not Boomers.

A lot of Hillarys also want various types of smoking bans - but so does Mike Huckabee.

Quite so - Governor Huckabee is a famous anti smoking fanatic.

As for contraception - which I agree should be legal.

Contraception is presented as an alternative to abortion, which is is in turn presented as an alternative to births out of wedlock.

Yet, in reality, all three go togther, - if one of the three is rising in a particular time and place, then the other two will tend to be rising as well (the exact opposite of what people are told to expect).

And an area or group of people who have a high abortion rate will tend to have a high proportion of births out of wedlock as well.

And they will be a population with loads and loads of "sex education" at school - and lots of contraception available as well.

This is not technology this is culture - or, rather, cultural decline.

Where I do not agree with the "religious right" is that they think that government passing regulations (and other such) can correct this - which I hold to be utterly absurd.

I forgot to make the obvious point. The problem with Huckabee is not that he leads some rival movement to the Left imperilling individual freedom, or that he wants to be your Dad whilst Democrats want to be your Mum or however you want to phrase it.

The problem is simply that Huckabee is a Left-winger. He may also be a Baptist, he may disagree with standard Democratic doctrine on a few issues, but basically he is a Lefty and he wants to be your Mum as much as any of them.

Now, this wouldn't apply to some members of the Christian Right who are also, in their way, threats to individual liberty.