Pubdate: Tue, 18 Jun 2013
Source: Boston Herald (MA)
Copyright: 2013 The Boston Herald, Inc
Contact:  http://news.bostonherald.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/53
Note: Prints only very short LTEs.
Author: Michael Barone
Note: Michael Barone is senior political analyst for The Washington 
Examiner and a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

U.S. TAKES LIBERTARIAN TURN ON GAYS, GUNS, POT

Are Americans becoming more libertarian on cultural issues? I see 
evidence that they are, in poll findings and election results on 
three unrelated issues - marijuana legalization, same-sex marriage 
and gun rights.

Start with pot. Last November, voters in the states of Colorado and 
Washington voted to legalize marijuana, by a 55 to 45 percent margin 
in Colorado (more than Barack Obama's margin in the state) and by 56 
to 44 percent in Washington.

In contrast, California voters rejected legalization 53 to 47 percent 
in 2010. These results and poll data suggest a general movement 
toward legal marijuana.

And marijuana has already become effectively legal in many of the 
states that have reduced penalties for possession of small amounts or 
have legalized medical marijuana. You can easily find addresses and 
phone numbers of dispensaries on the Web.

Same-sex marriage, rejected in statewide votes between 1998 and 2008 
and most recently in North Carolina in May 2012, was approved by 
voters in Maine and Maryland in November 2012, and voters then 
rejected a ban on it in Minnesota.

Since then, legislators in Delaware, Minnesota and Rhode Island have 
voted to legalize same-sex marriage. A dozen states and the District 
of Columbia now have similar laws that would have been unthinkable 
two decades ago.

Polls show that support for same-sex marriage is well-nigh universal 
among young Americans, but it has also been rising among their elders.

To some it may seem odd to yoke together marijuana and gay rights, 
generally thought of as causes of the left, with gun rights, 
supported more by the political right. Yet in all three cases 
Americans have been moving toward greater liberty for the individual.

One landmark was the first law, passed in Florida in 1987, allowing 
ordinary citizens to carry concealed weapons. Many, including me, 
thought that the result would be frequent shootouts in the streets.

That hasn't happened. It turns out that almost all ordinary citizens 
handle guns with appropriate restraint, as they do with the other 
potential deadly weapon people encounter every day, the automobile.

Concealed-carry laws have spread to 40 states, with few ill effects. 
Politicians who opposed them initially, like former Michigan Gov. 
Jennifer Granholm, have not sought their repeal.

In contrast, voters have reacted negatively to gun control proposals, 
even after horrific events like the Newtown massacre. That was 
apparent in the Senate's rejection of the Toomey-Manchin gun registration bill.

What about the cultural issue that most pundits mention first, 
abortion? Attitudes have remained roughly the same: Most Americans 
think abortion should be, in Bill Clinton's phrase, safe, legal and rare.

Young Americans, contrary to their libertarian leaning on same-sex 
marriage, are slightly less pro-abortion rights than their elders. 
They've seen sonograms, and all of them by definition owe their 
existence to a decision not to abort.

Back in the conformist America of the 1950s - a nation of greater 
income equality and stronger labor unions, as liberals like to point 
out - marijuana, homosexual acts and abortion weren't political 
issues. They were crimes. And opposition to gun control measures in 
the 1950s and 1960s was much less widespread and vigorous than it is today.

Is this libertarian trend a good thing for the nation? Your answer 
will depend on your values.

I'm inclined to look favorably on it. I think the large majority of 
Americans can use marijuana and guns responsibly. Same-sex marriage 
can be seen as liberating, but it also includes an element of 
restraint. Abortions in fact have become more rare over a generation.

But I do see something to worry about. In his bestseller "Coming 
Apart," my American Enterprise Institute colleague Charles Murray 
shows that college-educated Americans have handled liberating trends 
of the 1970s like no-fault divorce with self-restraint.

But at the bottom of the social scale we have seen an unraveling, 
with out-ofwedlock births, continuing joblessness and a lack of 
social connectedness and civic involvement.

In conformist America the old prohibitions provided these people with 
guardrails, as The Wall Street Journal's Daniel Henninger has 
written. In today's more libertarian America, the guardrails may be gone.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom