TAMPA, March 26, 2013 – No satire could approach reality when it comes to the federal government. While its two “polar opposite” political parties continue their standoff over whether the federal budget should increase $2.5 trillion or $2.4 trillion over the next ten years, its supposedly apolitical arm will begin deliberating over who is allowed to get married.
After that, they will take up the question of which end of the egg Americans may break.
Only a full century of government mayhem could have led to this. The court will consider two laws that together make up such a tangled mess that it’s fitting that the body that found Obamacare to be “a tax” should be assigned to sort it out.
The Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) is the federal law that stipulates that no state is required to recognize a same sex marriage from another state. It also defines marriage as being between a man and a woman for all “federal purposes,” meaning any benefits normally paid to spouses in a federal retirement or entitlement program.
DOMA itself is a quagmire. Proponents of federalism have read the interstate portion as a protection of states’ rights, but is it? If this is an area that is beyond the power of the federal government, then why does Congress have to pass a law to say so? Why are they allowed to pass such a law at all?
Read the rest of the article on Liberty Pulse…
Tom Mullen is the author of Where Do Conservatives and Liberals Come From? And What Ever Happened to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness? Part One and A Return to Common Sense: Reawakening Liberty in the Inhabitants of America.
I’m feeling full of charisma today, so here’s another rebuttal.
Tom writes:
“All human beings are free to order their actions and dispose of their persons and possessions as they see fit”.
Actually, what he probably meant to say was:
“All human beings SHOULD be free to order their actions and dispose of their persons and possessions as they see fit”.
Here’s a thought experiment (see if you can find anything wrong with it).
– A 27-year-old named Kurt is going through a 4-month depression phase.
– Kurt has no job or friends, all his relatives are dead. Everyone has forgotten he exists.
– Kurt wants to kill himself with a shotgun. Doing this won’t impose any suffering on others, because everyone forgot he exists.
– A man named ForceBob puts Kurt in a straitjacket, and Kurt is given mental treatment for the 4 months.
– After the 4 months, Kurt goes on to live way past the age of 27 (with ups and downs along the way).
The non-aggressive perspective would claim that ForceBob’s actions are inappropriate. ForceBob is preventing Kurt from acting as he (Kurt) sees fit.
And yet… that doesn’t matter.
ForceBob has the rational advantage in this case, because the world in which ForceBob commits coercion is (presumably) superior to the world in which Kurt kills himself.
I do agree that dictators (for instance) are immoral, BUT they aren’t immoral because of coercion – they’re immoral because they produce mediocre outcomes.
Likewise, libertarians have a responsibility to demonstrate that freedom is intrinsically good, and not net utility (net utility = pleasure – pain).