When we shop for a  car, we look for one with both a motor and brakes,
right? When we shop for a political ideology, we also want one that can
stop as well as go.

Few Americans say, "forget the cultural brakes, just give us the political
engine." Such a high powered engine is LIBERTARIANISM .

A moderate libertarian agrees that to protect personal liberty is the
primary but not the only reason we have governments.

A pure libertarian demands unlimited personal freedom in everything at all
times. She wants no state  intervention in private wealth. He abides no
government regulation of any form of private behavior, public or private. A
pure libertarian  wants no mandated dress codes, no parental consent needed for children to abort their offspring, no government alliances with
religious groups, no special favors for traditional families. The
libertarian ideal is co-operation based on consent: persuasion not
coercion.

Libertarian purists  are selling us a car with a powerful motor (absolute
freedom) but with no brakes (traditional morality).

Imagine a world with ABSOLUTELY unlimited freedom of expression or
unlimited access to weapons. Imagine such a position put to work in your
public school, your church, on your superhighways or in other spheres of
public life. Discuss this idea with friends   "what if" no other right
limits the first  or the second amendment or other amendments to the
Federal Constitution? When  such mental experiments are completed, most of us have concluded that there must be social brakes as well as social
engines.

Journalist and researcher Jeff Riggenbach of San Francisco is the 800 pound gorilla of libertarians. He opened a  new era  when the LIBERTARIAN REVIEW of February 1979 published his essay "In  Praise of Decadence." That article was later expanded into a book by the same name. Riggenbach praised a young, rising generation of Americans anti-authoritarian, individualist, and anti-state. "LEAVE US ALONE" was  the worthy battle cry of homosexuals, feminists, abortionists, minorities and others. They were against censorship and dictators. But many weakened their anti-statist purity by calling on the state at the same time to pass new laws to force other citizens to "leave them alone."  Riggenbach declared "the authority of previous generations" "a sorry spectacle." Furthermore, God being a fiction, He has no representatives on earth. Without belief in authority there would have been no kings, bishops, no Viet-Nam war.

The 1960s were Riggenbach's "greatest generation." For they were a decade of "decadent individualism." And every decadent age is "a period of
innovation and high craftsmanship in the arts, and of passionate commitment to ideas in all the intellectual spheres."

Moderate libertarians see personal freedom as the most important purpose of civil order--but not its only purpose. Motors yes, for sure, but we also
need and want brakes, say the moderates.

In the words of Russell Kirk, brakes are supplied by "transcendent
sanctions for conduct." That is,  government cannot work, unless a power
higher than man makes the rules. Only men and women under God  make civil society possible.

-OOO-

for INDEPENDENT TORCH