Libertarian columnist Jacob Sullum criticizes culture war figures for signing Mt Vernon Statement

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Townhall.com is a website whose most well-known columnists are airheads like (coughcough) Brent Bozell, Michelle Malkin, Ann Coulter, Ben Shapiro, Chuck Norris, and...oh, too many to list!

But I happened upon an article that seemed to make sense. Jacob Sullum is a senior editor at the libertarian Reason magazine. His latest column, "Fight the Power" (a great Public Enemy song btw) criticizes the founders of organizations Parents Television Council and Concerned Women for America for signing the Mount Vernon Statement, which he reports "swears fealty to a 'constitutional conservatism' that 'applies the principle of limited government based on the rule of law to every proposal' and 'honors the central place of individual liberty in American politics and life.'"

Regarding cultural conservatives' signing the MVS, Sullum comments:

Likewise, one searches the Constitution in vain for the power to create a national board of censors charged with regulating the content of TV shows. Yet L. Brent Bozell, the Mount Vernon Statement's seventh signer and main organizer, is the founder of the Parents Television Council, an organization dedicated to manipulating this power, which would be unconstitutional even if the First Amendment did not exist.

The apostles of constitutional conservatism also include Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, and Wendy Wright, president of Concerned Women for America. In addition to supporting the unauthorized wars on drugs, pornography and broadcast indecency, Perkins and Wright both favor national restrictions on abortion, cloning, suicide and gay marriage -- all matters that the Constitution leaves to the states (which are in turn subject to the limits imposed by their constitutions).

My point is not that Perkins and Wright are wrong to think that pornography, abortion and gay marriage should be banned (although I do disagree with those positions). My point is that their avowed commitment to respecting the Constitution cannot be taken seriously if they do not care how they reach those goals.

By enlisting the federal government in their moral crusades, conservatives do not merely alienate potential allies who reject their premises about the appropriate use of force. They sanction the idea that the federal government can do whatever the Constitution does not explicitly forbid, as opposed to the Framers' vision of a federal government that can do only what the Constitution explicitly allows.

[DRoseDARs]

1. Too many people conflate the whole of Libertarianism w/ the foam-at-the-mouth insanity on the right.

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