Reply #24: Certainly there are flaws ... [View All]

I did not intend the analogy as a 1:1 comparison, and we could consider several "what if" scenarios, but the fact of the matter is that the Constitution was created precisely because the AoC were so unworkable and were not creating a cohesive nation. The idea of the lack of a strong central government with robust revenue generating powers sounds nice in the context of the freedom loving rhetoric, but every time it comes close to being tested, the test falls apart. In our alternative timeline with a nation built on more purely libertarian principles, individual states may have flourished, to a degree, but even those individual states did not adhere to libertarianism internally. Had we maintained that path we would have been setting ourselves up for European style boundary conflicts ala the Middle Ages with the modifier of several European powers still perfectly willing to and capable of taking us down were they to find it in their interests.

But as you say, this has flaws for our comparative purposes here. My only point was the one you defined, summarized in the final sentence. We really don't know. Libertarian ideology is a theoretical one that, in our present environment, works well for populist purposes.


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