It looks like some 11 million illegal third world immigrants will soon become American citizens as Congress prepares to provide for them \u201ca pathway to citizenship.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Amnesty is coming our way.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, another event makes national news as it is announced that women will no longer be prohibited from engaging in combat.\u00a0<\/p>\n
A certain type of libertarian cheers both developments, and for good reason: underlying both is one and the same conception of liberty.<\/p>\n
That is to say, the idea underwriting both of these issues is the idea that liberty or freedom is as self-evident and universal as is the most basic statements of mathematics. It is an idea of liberty that is as indifferent\u2014utterly, thoroughly indifferent\u2014to culture and history as is 2 + 2 = 4.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Though they broke American laws in so doing, those millions of immigrants who entered our country illegally were simply acting on their \u201cright,\u201d their liberty, to pursue happiness for themselves and their children.\u00a0 Similarly, women have \u201ca right,\u201d a liberty, to fight to on the front lines of war if they so choose.<\/p>\n
Judge Andrew Napolitano is an example of a type of libertarian who thinks along these lines. \u00a0<\/p>\n
The Judge eviscerated Arizona Governor Jan Brewer when she signed SB 1070 to help Arizonans deal with the ravages of illegal immigration that it had been suffering for years.\u00a0 And he also has never put up any kind of resistance to amnesty.\u00a0 Instead, Napolitano has remarked that if \u201cour rights come from our Creator\u2014as the Declaration of Independence declares,\u201d then \u201chow can they differ because of where our mothers were when we were born?\u201d<\/p>\n
With respect to the administration\u2019s decision to lift the ban on women in combat, Napolitano claimed to be \u201cthrilled.\u201d\u00a0 While on a Fox News panel last week, the Judge noted what he perceived to be the irony involved in the fact that it is a \u201ccollectivist president\u201d who has decided \u201cthat people should be judged as individuals and not as members of groups [.]\u201d\u00a0 Napolitano lavished praise upon the President for relegating to the dustbin of history \u201cthe old military prejudices against\u2026women,\u201d ideas rooted, \u201cnot in facts,\u201d but \u201coften\u2026in ignorance, bias and prejudice [.]\u201d<\/p>\n
This latest development, Napolitano believes, is a victory for liberty and individualism, for \u201ceach person in the military will [now] be judged for combat, leadership and command based on their skills and ability\u2014not some group they are a member of based on the consequence of birth<\/em>\u201d (Emphasis added).<\/p>\n For this type of libertarian, a person\u2019s gender, like his or her race, ethnicity, culture, and history itself, is a mere <\/em>\u201cconsequence of birth.\u201d\u00a0 There is another type of libertarian, however\u2014a conservative <\/em>libertarian, if you will.<\/p>\n The great apostle of modern day conservatism, Edmund Burke, is among the more well known representatives of this type.\u00a0 For our generation, though, it is to a Jewish woman, a former resident of Israel and South Africa and the daughter of a Rabbi, to whom conservative libertarians can turn to find their most able defender.\u00a0 Her name is Ilana Mercer.<\/p>\n Mercer recently singled out Judge Napolitano\u2019s brand of libertarianism as \u201cleft-libertarianism.\u201d\u00a0 Left libertarians like Napolitano, she notes, regard \u201cliberty\u201d as \u201can abstraction. Apply it \u2018properly,\u2019\u201d she says, \u201cand it will work everywhere and always.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n From the perspective of left-libertarianism, \u201cliberty is propositional\u2014a deracinated idea, unmoored from the reality of history, biology, tradition, hierarchy.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n In reality, Mercer continues, liberty has a \u201ccivilizational dimension.\u201d It cannot be reduced, as left-libertarians would have us think, to the sole principle that no person should aggress against another.\u00a0<\/p>\n Though a Ron Paul supporter, and no fan of any of his rivals in the GOP presidential primaries, Mercer took the Congressman to task when he blasted Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum for allegedly disliking Muslims and Muslims and gays, respectively.\u00a0 \u201cA candidate who dismissed the national questions, namely immigration, affirmative action, the centrality to America of Christianity and the English language, etc.\u2014fails to appreciate the civilizational dimension of ordered liberty,\u201d she wrote.<\/p>\n Burke would agree.\u00a0 So too would many of America\u2019s founders agree with Mercer that liberty must be \u201cordered.\u201d<\/p>\n These great advocates for ordered liberty would also agree with her verdict that when liberty is defined against <\/em>\u201cthe consequences of birth,\u201d as the Judge Napolitanos of the world define it, it degenerates into disorder.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It looks like some 11 million illegal third world immigrants will soon become American citizens as Congress prepares to provide for them \u201ca pathway to citizenship.\u201d\u00a0 Amnesty is coming our way. Meanwhile, another event makes national news as it is announced that women will no longer be prohibited from engaging in combat.\u00a0 A certain type…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":399,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-732","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n