Take Me To School

Bill,

I haven’t read very much about libertarianism (not an Ayn Rand fan, sorry) and I’m struggling to understand it, so I’m hoping you’ll help me. The idea is that government can’t do anything well, or at least not very much?  That individual citizens organized in other social forms will produce a better result for all? That “liberty” outweighs other desirable collective values, such as equality of opportunity, or justice?

Your point that “politics ain’t beanbag” and that the nation shares a long and colorful history of bare knuckles competition in the public arena is well taken.

And yet, four years after Preston Brooks nearly beat Charges Sumner to death on the Senate floor the nation plunged itself into the single most destructive conflict in its history. Subsequently, our greatest President in extracted the nation from that conflict, erased the stain of slavery and ensured the survival of the country. It wasn’t foreordained that we would survive. Leadedrship matters. Leaders matter.  

Eli