A (Christian) Hero for Liberty

Libertarian Christians amuse me. It's hard to think of a more incoherent marriage of belief systems.

Limit government!....so we can impose theocratic social mandates from the Old Testament.
Live your life according to the Gospels....and fight for a return to the gold standard!

I thought the point of libertarianism was to minimize collective coercion and maximize individual "liberty." How is this compatible with legislating from the Book of Deuteronomy? Won't imposing Biblical standards necessarily limit individual freedom in a way that is repugnant to the libertarian philosophy? How could a libertarian force an atheist to keep the Sabbath holy? It's nonsensical.

Likewise, if you look toward the Bible to divine answers on the value of state's rights or the constitutionality of the Federal Reserve, you are missing the point. Whether the United States, a 230 year old country in a 13 billion year old universe adopts the gold standard to back its currency is of no relevance to salvation history. Unless, that is, you hold tight to a literal interpretation of the Bible, in which case every spare sentence can lead you chasing down a pointless rabbit hole of justification.

What most draws me to this phenomenon is that fundamentalism lies at the heart of both evangelical Christianity and libertarianism (at least for the people who proudly identify as both). The rigidity of fundamentalism is compelling enough on its own, but when a person subscribes to two rigid and contradictory belief systems, the end result is more entertaining than watching two government run high speed trains full of heathens crash head long into each other. The resulting post hoc explanations come across as excessive mental gymnastics or lazy self deception.

More seriously, from a political standpoint this belief system leads to a toxic fusion of religion and politics under the guise of "liberty." Religiously, it fatally distracts from true message of the Bible- loving God and loving one another- by focusing on irrelevant details due to a literal interpretation.

I've included two videos about why Ron Paul is the most Biblically sound candidate after the jump.


Introduction:



Ron Paul's Biblically ordained monetary policy: