Liberty Pen: John Stossel & David Boaz- 'The Future of Liberty'

Source:Liberty Pen- David Boaz is a fellow at the CATO Institute in Washington.

"David Boaz (CATO) and Nick Gillespie (Reason.tv) join John to discuss the politics of individual liberty, social tolerance and fiscal responsibility. Liberty Pen"

I'm a get Big Government out of my wallet and bedroom and any other aspect of my life where I'm not hurting anyone else Liberal. These people are called Classical Liberals and sometimes Libertarians but this this is actually what liberalism is about, which is to have liberty that benefits the country. It has to benefit everyone, so when people who are successful in life and have that freedom, because they got themselves the skills that they need to be free and successful in life.

Don't have to indefinitely subsidize the people who don't, because the people who haven't freed themselves in life have the opportunity and have been empowered to go out and get themselves the skills that they need to be free and successful in life. Which is one thing that separates liberalism from libertarianism.

Liberals understand that liberal democracy and capitalism are the best systems in the world, but of course it isn't perfect and we need some type of safety net. It doesn't have to be run by the Federal Government but some type of system to catch the people who fall through the cracks of the economy. So they can survive in the meantime and have an opportunity to get themselves on their feet.

One of the reasons why I'm a Liberal and not a Libertarian, is that Libertarians today sound more like Anarchists, something that I could never be, than Libertarians. If you are an actual Libertarian, you believe that we need government at all three levels, but that it should only do what the people can't do for themselves and that it should be very limited, cost-effective and that the power should be with the people in how we live our own lives, as long as we are not hurting innocent people with what we are doing. Thats basically what libertarianism is about.

But what you hear from today's Libertarians, is that government is basically incompetent in basically everything that it does, so why should we even have one. Let the private sector figure that out instead. Anarchists don't believe in government otherwise, they wouldn't be Anarchists. Maybe they would be Socialists, or even Communists and wake up one morning and decide that now they don't just like government, but have fallen in love with big government.

If Libertarians just stuck with the message of individual liberty and responsibility, based on limited government that only does what we need it to do, not what we want it to do, which is different and since that its limited that it doesn't need to tax us much and that it should stay out of our wallets and bedrooms, not try to control how we live our own lives, then Libertarianism would've advanced a lot more in America, than it has in the last forty years.