Some of the leadership in the PA Libertarian Party were committed Christians back then and I did have the opportunity to ask them if they didn’t feel any conflict between the party positions and their faith.

They saw the freedom that allowed them to worship and live as they pleased as intrinsically the same as the freedom that they were espousing through libertarianism. To them the Leftist’s desire over your pocketbook was the same sort of evil as the Right’s wanting to dictate morality. In other words… everybody feels they have their own “sphere of freedom” that they will make a ruckus over if they feel it’s being violated while at the same time not giving a hoot if somebody else’s “ox is being gored”. This is the fatal flaw in freedom, not recognizing and defending your neighbor’s freedom because it’s not your area of concern. And thus the coalitions break down.

When I asked about specific issues like drugs the answer was, “Do people who are on drugs stop using them because they are illegal or because of a maturing (and often a religious awakening) on their part?” I knew the answer wasn’t the law, or else they wouldn’t have started in the first place. And the argument is the same for most of the so-called “victimless crimes”. What causes people to commit them is a spiritual disorder that the law cannot overcome.

This is almost parallel to what the apostle Paul tells us, the law does not save… it condemns. It is Christ that saves, and spiritual maturity that leads to morality.

When asked about abortion, of course there was the guarantee that a Libertarian government would not spend one dime of the public’s money on it. But then I was surprised to hear that if a majority in a Libertarian Party saw fit to acknowledge the humanity of the human fetus then all of the liberty’s in the Party platform would have to be extended to the unborn! In other words, the Libertarian Party needed more Christians in it!

I was not convinced to join the Party, but since that time I have considered myself libertarian-leaning. And hope to see a coalition of freedom loving individuals beat back the inroads made by the collectivists. We start at a disadvantage by being the individualists.