The Judiciary Thread

[crimsonaudio]

I don’t disagree that the federal government is bloated and spends irresponsibly. But if libertarianism is the answer, I’m genuinely curious about how it handles some real-world complications.

If we limit federal power strictly to what’s enumerated in 1787, what’s the plan for everything the framers couldn’t have imagined — things like air travel, cybersecurity, nuclear energy, or pandemics? Would we let fifty different state systems handle those separately? Wouldn’t that invite chaos every time problems cross state lines, which most modern ones do?

Libertarians emphasize personal responsibility, which I respect. But how does libertarianism address outcomes that have little to do with personal choice — like being born poor, disabled, or in an area with unsafe water or failing schools? If the answer is “private charity,” what evidence suggests that private giving can scale to replace public safety nets in a country of 330 million?

You mention cutting departments like Education and Agriculture. If those vanish, who coordinates student loans, school standards, food safety, and agricultural disease control between states? Markets? State compacts? Without a coordinating framework, how would we keep economically weaker states from being left behind — with lower standards, unsafe products, and underfunded schools?

And when it's said that “the government shouldn’t tell people what to do,” does that include pollution rules, building safety codes, or vaccination requirements? At what point does one person’s “freedom” from regulation become another person’s loss of clean air, health, or safety?

I’m not asking these questions to score points — I’m genuinely wondering how libertarian principles scale in a complex, interdependent nation. Because in theory, “leave everyone alone” sounds elegant; in practice, it risks leaving a lot of people unprotected, unheard, and left to fend for themselves in a system that quietly rewards the powerful.

The answer to all of these questions was answered by Bodhi above - if it's not a constitutional power and it's needed (meaning, we the people want it), you amend the constitution. It was literally written so it can be altered as needed over time.

Libertarians have no problem with the government performing within its enumerated powers.

 

[Huckleberry]

The answer to all of these questions was answered by Bodhi above - if it's not a constitutional power and it's needed (meaning, we the people want it), you amend the constitution. It was literally written so it can be altered as needed over time.

Libertarians have no problem with the government performing within its enumerated powers.

Saying “just amend the Constitution” sounds tidy, but it doesn’t actually answer the practical issue. Amendments are meant for major structural changes, not everyday governance. Are we really going to amend the Constitution every time we need to deal with cybersecurity, food safety, nuclear energy, or a pandemic? That process takes years and supermajorities — it’s not how a modern country handles urgent or evolving problems.

The framers knew they couldn’t predict every challenge, which is why they built flexibility into the system: the Commerce Clause, the Necessary and Proper Clause, and the General Welfare Clause were intentional safeguards against paralysis.

And saying “libertarians have no problem with government performing its enumerated powers” just restates the theory. The real debate is how we define those powers in a 21st-century nation where nearly everything crosses state lines.

If the only solution to modern problems is “amend the Constitution or don’t do it,” then libertarianism isn’t offering limited government; it’s offering paralysis by design.

 

[Its On A Slab]

.. and if you were born weak and sick, then you'd better die young, since nobody will help you.
Sure, I like libertarianism on paper. Like I like Utopia. There is no difference between the two.

Let’s look at a simple example… Pandemic. Let’s pick a disease other than COVID. Such as https://www.cdc.gov/cholera/about/about-cholera-in-the-united-states.html
To protect you, a wealthy, happy, healthy individual, and your children from Cholera, the evil government has to have the CDC working on prevention. If not, then you will get Cholera (or pick any other disease) and die like wealthy libertarians did several hundred years ago.

And we can go on and on about the need for Police, DoD, DARPA, USDA, CDC, FDA, OSHA, FRS, and other evil government agencies that ivory tower libertarians take for granted

Satire is best when people don't know that it isn't serious.

 

[jthomas666]

Saying “just amend the Constitution” sounds tidy, but it doesn’t actually answer the practical issue. Amendments are meant for major structural changes, not everyday governance. Are we really going to amend the Constitution every time we need to deal with cybersecurity, food safety, nuclear energy, or a pandemic? That process takes years and supermajorities — it’s not how a modern country handles urgent or evolving problems.

See the Alabama constitution for a practical example.

 

[crimsonaudio]

Saying “just amend the Constitution” sounds tidy, but it doesn’t actually answer the practical issue. Amendments are meant for major structural changes, not everyday governance. Are we really going to amend the Constitution every time we need to deal with cybersecurity, food safety, nuclear energy, or a pandemic? That process takes years and supermajorities — it’s not how a modern country handles urgent or evolving problems.

We should do it for the government agencies, yes. It wouldn't have to be constant, because once you have an EPA, for example, it's there for good. SCOTUS has determine how far those powers extend, but much of our modern government waste stems from ignoring the constitutional guardrails that exist for a reason.

If we're going to allow the federal government to expand as it wishes, why even have a constitution?

 

[some_al_fan]

Do our libertarian friends support today's No Kings protests or do they prefer to have a king?

 

[crimsonaudio]

We don’t have a king, these protests will accomplish literally nothing.

 

[some_al_fan]

We don’t have a king, these protests will accomplish literally nothing.

How can you call a person who acts like he is above law and issue illegal orders?
Besides that he literally says that on video that "he can do whatever he wants"
How Trump is different from a king?

 

[crimsonaudio]

How can you call a person who acts like he is above law and issue illegal orders?
Besides that he literally says that on video that "he can do whatever he wants"

If he were a king, there wouldn't be protests - they'd not be allowed.

 

[selmaborntidefan]

If he were a king, there wouldn't be protests - they'd not be allowed.

And there wouldn’t be a government shutdown, either. He’d just appoint replacements and things would go on.

incidentally, there were no kings (of the US) this morning before they arrived at the protests, and there will not be any kings (of the US) when they go to sleep tonight or when they awaken tomorrow.

But they did a great job, not allowing a change that was never going to happen to those 24 hours to, you know, actually happen. They prevented a global crisis and saved us all from ever again being affected by Emperor Don Dorito.

That said, Raging Orangutan will have his fragile ego pricked and respond wrongly enough to turn a one-day story into a four-day rant.

 

[some_al_fan]

If he were a king, there wouldn't be protests - they'd not be allowed.

There are many countries with kings right now where protests are allowed.
Just because the protests are still allowed (although there were attempts to stop them) does not mean that Trump is not acting like a king

 

[some_al_fan]

Very good summary about today’s “No Kings” protests:

https://www.reddit.com/r/CringeTikToks/comments/1o9lge8

 

[Huckleberry]

Nobody at the protest thinks Trump literally has a crown and scepter. “No kings” is shorthand for no president acting like he’s above the law.

The “if he were a king, protests wouldn’t be allowed” line misses the point — people protest so that they can keep the right to protest. That’s one way democracies keep creeping authoritarianism in check.

There was no official King of the U.S. this morning. But when a president claims “I can do whatever I want,” ignores legal limits, and punishes anyone who enforces them, the title isn’t the issue — the behavior is.

So the “No Kings” crowd is doing its job. The goal isn’t to dethrone a monarch; it’s to make sure we never need to.

What worries me most of all isn’t Trump acting above the law — it’s how many people have stopped caring. Once partisanship replaces principle, and people decide executive power is fine as long as it’s their side using it, the guardrails stop working. Most democracies don’t die in a coup; they decay slowly as people accept small abuses of power, tell themselves it’s temporary but necessary, and stop demanding accountability.

 

[Bodhisattva]

Someone else's stupidity imposes on your libertarian aspirations. How do you reconcile this certainty?

Stupid people will always be with us. How do you deal with them? I avoid interacting with them when possible. Protect myself and my family physically and financially. Get the police and/or courts involved when necessary. How would you do it?

How does this reconcile with rebuilding after natural disasters and the like? A true libertarian government would not be there to provide the FEMA support.

FEMA? The joke of a federal agency that takes does a far better job handing out money to scammers than it does actually helping people? Can you comprehend something less stupid? I can.

I dont even know why I engaged in this. Libertarianism died with the arrival of the Mosaic Law.

Ridiculous

 

[Bodhisattva]

I like libertarianism as an ideology. It is just not practical in real life. Once you start asking libertarian politicians about solving real world problems, you quickly find out that they don't have the answers

You want the government to solve everyone’s problems? So, a nanny state and the world’s policeman are your standards? Good luck with all that expense, failure, and unintended consequences. That’s what we have now. So, more then?

 

[Bodhisattva]

I don’t disagree that the federal government is bloated and spends irresponsibly. But if libertarianism is the answer, I’m genuinely curious about how it handles some real-world complications.

If we limit federal power strictly to what’s enumerated in 1787, what’s the plan for everything the framers couldn’t have imagined — things like air travel, cybersecurity, nuclear energy, or pandemics? Would we let fifty different state systems handle those separately? Wouldn’t that invite chaos every time problems cross state lines, which most modern ones do?

The Constitution gives you the answer: amend the document as necessary.

Libertarians emphasize personal responsibility, which I respect. But how does libertarianism address outcomes that have little to do with personal choice — like being born poor, disabled, or in an area with unsafe water or failing schools? If the answer is “private charity,” what evidence suggests that private giving can scale to replace public safety nets in a country of 330 million?

Things that are not constitutionally sanctioned for federal activity are left for the states to regulate/subsidize, the market to solve, or individuals/charities to help. These options are far better than expensive, ineffective one-size-fits-all federal plans. Again, the assumption from the left seems to be that most people are so incompetent that they can’t survive without a bureaucratic nanny. And, of course, lefties don’t think themselves to be basket cases, only most everyone else (especially minorities, which is softly racist).

You mention cutting departments like Education and Agriculture. If those vanish, who coordinates student loans, school standards, food safety, and agricultural disease control between states? Markets? State compacts? Without a coordinating framework, how would we keep economically weaker states from being left behind — with lower standards, unsafe products, and underfunded schools?

It’s not the business of the federal government to hand out student loans. Can’t you see how this bad policy has jacked up tuition over the years? (I was watching Rachel Maddow when she infamously claimed student loans were the best way to bring down costs. She is one of the many educated idiots who get paid millions.) And encourage people not best suited for college to go to college, wasting years of productivity and saddling them with student loan debt? What should happen is when you realize you are doing something stupid, you stop doing something stupid. Not so with the government. It either completely ignores the stupidity, or if it does recognize the problem, it doubles down on stupidity as the “solution” to the original stupidity. Look to almost any government program as an example.

And when it's said that “the government shouldn’t tell people what to do,” does that include pollution rules, building safety codes, or vaccination requirements? At what point does one person’s “freedom” from regulation become another person’s loss of clean air, health, or safety?

That’s an incomplete quote. The default is that you can do whatever you want until it interferes with my freedom. I don’t care if you like to consume alcohol. When you drink and drive, then it’s a problem. You have the right to own a gun. You don’t have the right to murder your neighbor. That kind of infringes on his freedom.

I’m not asking these questions to score points — I’m genuinely wondering how libertarian principles scale in a complex, interdependent nation. Because in theory, “leave everyone alone” sounds elegant; in practice, it risks leaving a lot of people unprotected, unheard, and left to fend for themselves in a system that quietly rewards the powerful.

But people are not unprotected. You can protect yourself or enlist the services of the police or the civil/criminal courts. Wanting minimal, constitutional government is not a call for no government. Critics of libertarianism always seem to resort to this strawman.

 

[some_al_fan]

You want the government to solve everyone’s problems? So, a nanny state and the world’s policeman are your standards? Good luck with all that expense, failure, and unintended consequences. That’s what we have now. So, more then?

No, I do not want the government to solve everyone’s problem, and I don’t want you to use a strawman argument.
Can you please answer a simple question: “If a person, not you, but a person, lived his life not to your standards and did not accumulate enough capital to keep him fed in old age. No relatives." What are we supposed to do about that person? Shoot them by a firing squad? Lethal injection? Who is going to pick up and bury their corpses?
That is the real question where libertarian ideology breaks.

 

[Bodhisattva]

Again, libertarian foreign policy assumes that other countries like China, Russia, and Iran will just mind their own business and stick within their borders.

No, it doesn’t. Again, I have no idea how you come up with this. It is flat out wrong. Do you go out looking for people to fight? Will you defend yourself and your family if they are attacked? Violently, if necessary? If your answers are no, yes, and yes, congratulations on being a libertarian.

God had one simple rule for man, dont eat fruit from the tree of knowledge. We could not do it. Sin was born and hopes of libertarian society vanished. "You do you" is not even a Jesus inspired value as we are called to care for the poor sick and infirm. "You do You" really means "So I can Do Me."

Wrong. Within a population there are people who are smart/stupid, honest/dishonest, nice/mean, competent/incompetent, etc. Always has been. Always will be. Libertarians understand human nature better than most. Personal responsibility and merit are the standard. Do what my wife and I do, enjoy all sorts of rewards (that can then be shared). Do what many members of my family do, live a life of chosen poverty and lack of accomplishment. Our charity encourages people to improve their lives. Government theft disguised as charity encourages people to stay in the welfare hammock and others to join in the mooch-parade. Everyone can see this if they just look.

Libertarians that I know dont vote and are not civically engaged. Libertarians have no solution or sympathy for anyone other than themselves.

Wrong. I always vote, just not for either evil party (at the national level) since 1992. And voting is hardly the most important way to be civilly engaged.

It’s interesting that the left considers the desire to keep what one has earned to be selfish, but to steal (via the government) from others is not selfish. That’s an ass backwards way of looking at the world.

I have repeatedly shown that libertarians have better solutions and sympathy than those who lazily pass off responsibility to the government so things can become worse.

 

[75thru79]

It’s not the business of the federal government to hand out student loans. Can’t you see how this bad policy has jacked up tuition over the years? (I was watching Rachel Maddow when she infamously claimed student loans were the best way to bring down costs. She is one of the many educated idiots who get paid millions.) And encourage people not best suited for college to go to college, wasting years of productivity and saddling them with student loan debt? What should happen is when you realize you are doing something stupid, you stop doing something stupid. Not so with the government. It either completely ignores the stupidity, or if it does recognize the problem, it doubles down on stupidity as the “solution” to the original stupidity. Look to almost any government program as an example.

Student loans are an abomination that should have never happened. All they have done is enslave a huge population of young people under a mountain of ill-advised debt and allowed universities a steady supply of money without ever having to examine their business model and provide value for the astronomical amounts of money they charge. You don't dare say this in public because "education is the answer to all your problems", according to the left. I got news for them, it isn't. So you go into debt for that philosophy, humanities, literature degree? Great. Good for you. I'm sure that fancy degree and the "enlightenment" it brings will pay your rent and put food on the table.

I am not against education. Not in the least. We all should strive to become better versions of ourselves. However, there have to be limits to what you spend. If you are going to go into debt for an education, please, for the love of god, get a degree that will actually help you pay the bills. If you just want to be enlightened then do independent study. The internet has all you need, for free, to learn all you want to know about the stuff they teach you in those worthless degree classes.

 

[Bodhisattva]

No, I do not want the government to solve everyone’s problem, and I don’t want you to use a strawman argument.
Can you please answer a simple question: “If a person, not you, but a person, lived his life not to your standards and did not accumulate enough capital to keep him fed in old age. No relatives." What are we supposed to do about that person? Shoot them by a firing squad? Lethal injection? Who is going to pick up and bury their corpses?
That is the real question where libertarian ideology breaks.

It's not about my standards. It's about and able-bodied adult being a responsible person - acting like an adult, in other words. It is extremely easy to be successful in this country. It is harder and takes longer than it should thank to governmental hurdles like inflation. But it is still easily achievable.

No firing squads or lethal injections are necessary (unless they have earned the punishment for a capital offense). My default is to leave people along. Adversity can build character and encourage you to improve. It certainly did with me as a poor kids growing up in the sticks of Alabama. It certainly did for my wife growing up in enforced poverty in Vietnam.

For your sad-sack example, all the rewards are theirs (I have no right to them). All the detriments are theirs (I have no responsibility for them). I may choose to help, but I have no obligation to do so. Same with you. Feeling bad for someone and making others bail them out is selfish and cowardly. "That guy sucks, and I wish he didn't. You (taxpayer) bail him out, so I can feel better about myself."

Again, libertarian ideology at its foundation is an understanding of human nature. The ideology doesn't break by realize what people are and how incentives work and how government doesn't.