libertarianism

The idea that licentiousness among consenting adults (legalized drugs, prostitution, gambling, etc.) can co-exist with limited government (confined strictly to preventing anyone from infringing upon the life, liberty, and property rights of anyone else) under a constitutional republic in an environment free from interference by over-zealous right-wing Bible-thumpers, tax-and-spend liberals, or other external agents of oppression. The main problem with this delusional notion of co-existence is that it runs afoul of an annoying immutable natural law - roughly translated as "nature abhors a vacuum" - that's understood and exploited by every drug pusher, credit card issuer, Las Vegas casino, and Madison Avenue marketer and even the bailout-happy U.S. Federal Reserve and which was summed up by Edmund Burke: "Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites; in proportion as they are disposed to listen to the counsels of the wise and good in preference to the flattery of knaves. "Society cannot exist, unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere; and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without. "It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters." -or as John Adams said: “(The U.S.) constitution was made for a moral and religious people; it is wholly inadequate for any other.”