Q&A Friday #16: Do Libertarians Have A Beef With Religion?

by John Hawkins | May 6, 2005 3:47 am

Question: “What beef do libertarians have with religion?” — covok48

“I like covak48’s question, “What beef do libertarians have with religion?” That is a very interesting question.” — dshompe

Answer: Truthfully, I don’t think most libertarians have a problem with religion. What ya gotta understand is that libertarians have a political philosophy that in essence almost boils down to “Anything goes” when it comes to social issues.

When you’re talking about a group of people who — generally — favor legalizing crack, are pro-prostitution, and who think abortion is just nifty, they’re obviously going to have some very deep philosophical disagreements with those of us who are more comfortable making value judgments. By the way, let me emphasize that I’m not, in any way, shape, or form, trying to say that libertarians are amoral. They just tend to have an extremely limited view of what powers the government should be allowed to have.

So libertarians do tend to constantly disagree with religious people on political issues, but again, that doesn’t indicate hostility.

Of course, there are a VERY small number of people on the right whom I would categorize as overtly hostile to religion. But, the only two who really stand out in my mind are Andrew Sullivan[1] (whom I don’t consider to be conservative anymore) and John Cole of Balloon Juice[2] who gets linked fawningly by the likes of the Daily Kos[3].

Aside from a very few exceptions of that sort, almost all of the people who look down their nose at religious folk and ramble on about “Jesusland” and “theocracy” are liberals.

Endnotes:
  1. Andrew Sullivan: http://www.andrewsullivan.com/
  2. Balloon Juice: http://www.balloon-juice.com/
  3. Daily Kos: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/5/5/175846/9499

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