Michael Gerson has a strong rebuke of “libertarian nonsense” in his column today for the Washington Post. He writes: A Republican ideology pitting the “makers” against the “takers” offers nothing. No sympathy for our fellow citizens. No insight into our social challenge. No hope of change. This approach involves a relentless reductionism. Human worth is reduced to economic production. Social problems are reduced to personal vices. Politics is reduced to class warfare on behalf of the upper class.

In last week’s Republican debate, Ron Paul called for a repeal of laws against prostitution, cocaine, and heroin. Paul argued that our society should treat turning tricks and shooting up in the same way that we treat freedom of religion—they are inalienable rights. This kind of libertarianism in my view is deficient in its view of human nature and would comprise an unloving and degrading way to organize society. I couldn’t agree more with Michael Gerson’s critique of Paul’s libertarian approach. Gerson writes:

On the most important issues, libertarianism is no better than rank liberalism, and sometimes liberalism is better. Case in point above. Here is the relevant exchange:

John Murdock has an apt analysis of last week’s Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). In short, he says that pot was in and that social conservatism was out. Traditionally, the conservative coalition has been concieved as a three-legged stool: social conservatives, fiscal conservatives, and foreign policy conservatives. Murdock says that the social conservative leg was missing at CPAC and that Libertarianism is on the rise. There were no sessions devoted to pro-life issues. Nor were there any sessions given to advance a traditional view of marriage. These staples of social conservatism simply weren’t on the agenda. Nor were they major emphases of the headline speakers–not even of those who are…

Michael Gerson has hit two homeruns in one week with his Washington Post column. On Sunday, he knocked it out of the park with a broadside of Ron Paul’s libertarianism. Today, he hits another one over the fence with his remarks about Rick Santorum. Gerson writes:

  The video above is a case in point of why I don’t care for Glenn Beck’s politics. It doesn’t matter to me that he is an economic and national defense conservative. He treats the greatest human rights crisis of our time (abortion on demand) as an afterthought, and he’s totally out to lunch on gay marriage. This is libertarianism, and I’m not a fan. Here’s a bit from the exchange on gay marriage: