Are Social Conservatives as Orwellian as the Left?

Via Oleg Volk

Yesterday, speaking to Bill O’Reilly on his Fox News show, Ann Coulter talked about how she hated libertarians like Ron Paul, not because of the ninety percent of the cases where eliminating government was a good solution, but because of the remaining ten percent where she saw government as necessary and libertarians like Ron Paul don’t.

I could note here that a mixture of 90% mother’s milk and 10% cyanide would be 100% lethal to a baby — and that Ron Paul, himself, is only 90% libertarian compared to an agorist like me — but to avoid both analogies and grading libertarian purity on a curve, let me start with Ann Coulter’s first stated objection.

Ann Coulter hates that libertarians like Ron Paul don’t think the government should define the word “marriage.” She argued, albeit briefly, for the view that the consequences of replacing a uniform and traditional definition of marriage defined by law, with new definitions arrived at solely in the private sector, would have unknown consequences.

If Ann Coulter’s statement is a conservative meme — don’t allow freedom of choice because we don’t know what the consequences will be — then the mainstream political spectrum is nothing more than an argument between left-wingers who want social engineers to speed change and right-wingers who want social engineers to impede change.

Of course it isn’t that simple.