The real world – particularly seen through the lens of parenthood - makes it harder for people to retain libertarian beliefs.
A Conservative Is A Liberal Mugged By Reality
Sneering at Michael Howard’s prison works policy is de rigueur amongst a gathering of the Liberati but a liberal becomes keener on incarceration when her WWII veteran grandfather gets brutally mugged on the way back from the shops.
It’s easy to feel very pleased with oneself after sending a £50 cheque to the latest Liberty campaign but libertarians wisely become 9/11 hawks when they learn how Muslim extremists are plotting to terrorise London.
It’s easy to favour liberal sex education policies for schoolchildren but a libertarian gets angry and conservative when he finds that his daughter has had a ‘complicated’ abortion without any parental consent.
Around an Islington dinner table it may seem the done thing to tut-tut at the latest Fathers 4 Justice campaign. But when your daughter-in-law goes off with another man and you and your son can’t get reliable access to your grandson, you start thinking about hiring a Batman protest suit yourself.
Laughing at those university days spent in a haze of cannabis smoke suddenly isn’t so funny when you learn that one student friend is now suffering some mental health problems.
Again and again libertarianism appears to work in theory but conservative views (on punishment, the war on terror, family authority and drug use) work in practice.
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