Some libertarian reason...

An interesting take from libertarian David Boaz at Reason magazine demythologizing the hysteria among conservatives and self-styled libertarians over the alleged direction the country has taken toward "government tyranny" and "loss of freedom" since the days of the founding fathers.

Comments

[Jamie]

This article makes a very good point about slavery. There are many other examples of the contradictions in the "good old days" meme. Before the 20th century, beatings were a legal and accepted form for the police to get confessions, so the protections of due process were in some ways irrelevant. The people involved in the Whiskey Rebellion would probably not consider the original States free of undue regulation and taxes. There was not income tax, but there was sales tax, which, while much smaller overall, is a regressive tax burden on middle and lower income people. And slavery was a perversion of economics as well as justice. It was obviously terrible for black Americans, but it hurt white workers as well who had to compete with someone who made literally nothing. And, most of the country was stolen from Native Americans. In this sense, economic manipulation was even more pervasive, just not legislated. And yes there was no medicare or medicaid, but by modern standards, there was really no medical care at all. There was less regulation of trade but it was very costly and slow to transport things at all. By any modern standard, America was really a horrible place before the turn of the Century.
People who think about the past whimsically are like people who go to a fortuneteller and are excited to find out they were Cleopatra or Napolean in a past life, when statistically, they were probably someone who died before the age of five.
This kind of inanity doesn't contradict Libertarian ideas about what we should be doing now, but it certainly cast a shadow over their thought process.